Arizona election officials report issues with vote-counting machines at 20% of polling locations in Maricopa County



Maricopa County Board of Supervisors chairman Bill Gates reported on Tuesday morning that approximately 20% of the voting centers in Arizona's largest county are experiencing issues with vote-counting tabulators.

"About 20% of the locations out there where there's an issue with the tabulator where some of the ballots that after people have voted them, they try and run them through the tabulator and they're not going through," Gates stated.

\u201c#BREAKING Chairman @maricopacounty Board of Supervisors @billgatesaz says 20% voting centers are having issues w/tabulators. He says the ballot can still be dropped in the box, it will just get centrally tabulated tonight. He says they\u2019re working to fix the issue. #Election2022\u201d
— Ali Bradley (@Ali Bradley) 1667925045

Gates stated that if the tabulator does not accept a ballot, voters can place their ballots inside a "secure box," and they will be manually counted in the evening at a central counting location. A majority of Arizona counties tabulate ballots this way, Gates added.

"This will function much like early voting functions, in that we would get your ballot back, once we've signature-verified it, we would send it to our central tabulators," Gates said. "Ballots that are [at the central location] will already be signature-verified, so we won't need to confirm identity but we will central-tabulate them."

Voters across the county took to social media to report tabulator malfunctions at multiple Maricopa County locations. Residents captured videos of election workers announcing issues with the vote-counting machines.

"We have two tabulators. One of the tabulators is not working," an election worker at one Maricopa voting center explained to voters waiting in line to cast their ballots. "The other tabulator is taking about 75% successful. So, 25% of them are being misread. And it could be a printer issue, or it could be the tabulator itself. So, when it's misread, you have an option to put it into what's called box three, and it gets read. Whether it goes downtown and gets read manually or whether it gets refed into our tabulator."

\u201cBREAKING: Reports out of Maricopa county of Machines \u201cnot working\u201d and ballots being \u201cmisread\u201d\n\nWHAT IS GOING ON?\n\u201d
— Benny Johnson (@Benny Johnson) 1667917997

Another video shared on social media captured an election worker explaining how ballots placed into box three will be counted.

"Tonight, a Republican and a Democrat will sit and go through all of the misread ballots all over the county and count them," the election worker explained. She added that none of the tabulators at the voting location were working correctly.

"Nothing's working for the last half hour," she noted.

\u201cPoll worker in Maricopa County confirms "nothing's working" for the last half hour. Explains misread ballots will get counted downtown tonight.\u201d
— Charlie Kirk (@Charlie Kirk) 1667925913

According to the elections department, as of Tuesday, there were 2,463,264 active voters in Maricopa County. As of 11 a.m. ET, roughly 44,000 voters had cast their ballots in person.

Katie Hobbs (D), Arizona's current secretary of state and a gubernatorial candidate, refused calls to recuse herself from overseeing the midterm elections.

The tabulator issues in Maricopa County are expected to delay the announcement of the results in the critical gubernatorial race between Democrat Katie Hobbs and Republican Kari Lake and the Senate race between Democrat Mark Kelly and Republican Blake Masters.

\u201cScottsdale Arizona: 11735 N SCOTTSDALE RD\u2026 Machines are down all over the place.. Many COULDN\u2019T even get their votes counted.. \n\nThis is happening all just Maricopa county not just at this location.. Why is this happening @stephen_richer @katiehobbs ??\u201d
— DoBetterAZ.com (@DoBetterAZ.com) 1667929271

Democrat Katie Hobbs was a no-show at a Hispanic town hall where Kari Lake thrilled voters



Arizona gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs (D) was a no-show at a town hall event hosted by Spanish-language media Wednesday, while her Republican opponent Kari Lake not only came to the event but was a hit with the crowd.

Lake spoke for more than an hour addressing questions on K-12 education, public safety, immigration. She received loud applause for her answers, all the while standing next to an empty podium that was reserved for Hobbs. One of the event organizers said that Hobbs, who currently serves as secretary of state for Arizona, declined an invitation to participate. Members of the audience booed upon learning that Hobbs would not appear alongside Lake.

\u201cTwo candidates are announced, only one walked out. Where are you, @katiehobbs? These Latino voters deserve better.\u201d
— Kari Lake (@Kari Lake) 1665021287

The Democratic candidate has refused to participate in debates, calling her GOP opponent a 2020 election "conspiracy theorist." Hobbs campaign manager Nicole DeMont said in September any debate would give Lake the opportunity to "just create another spectacle" and that "you can't debate a conspiracy theorist." Those comments were made after the Hobbs campaign negotiated with the Citizens Clean Elections Commission to change a potential debate format into separate half-hour interviews with a moderator. The commission turned the campaign down, and since then there has been no agreement to have a debate.

Democratic strategists have begun to worry that Hobbs' refusal to debate and her comparative reluctance to do in-person campaign events will backfire with voters in what's considered a toss-up race. Whereas Lake organizes large rallies and speaks to reporters frequently, often to challenge their questions, Hobbs has run a quieter campaign with smaller gatherings and fewer press conferences.

"There's a lack of charisma," one anonymous Democratic strategist told ABC News on Wednesday. "And I think it's a challenge on their end because they're not confident when they go out, so their response to that is to try and do as little publicly as possible and try to sail to the finish line. And the ramifications of that are not everybody seeing you be visible."

The strategist, who requested anonymity to discuss the race frankly, said declining to debate Lake was a missed opportunity.

"Missing that was an error. I think a lot of the reasoning around that was 'oh, well, she's just gonna say crazy stuff anyway, let's not give her the platform,'" the strategist said. "But what happened with that was … voters missed out on seeing them next to each other, they missed out on seeing Hobbs be the adult in the room and Kari be bombastic."

Meanwhile, Lake has taken the opportunities Hobbs has given her to accuse her Democratic opponent of "hiding" from voters. After Wednesday's town hall, the Lake campaign shared a photo of Hobbs' empty podium with the caption, "They say a picture is worth a thousand words."

\u201cThey say a picture is worth a thousand words.\u201d
— Kari Lake (@Kari Lake) 1665022653

"She does not have the courage to be on this stage," Lake said of Hobbs during the event. "She says, 'I don't want to be there' and she says 'Kari's a conspiracy theorist.' Well, then, show up and call me out. I'm happy to have a dialogue."

"I'll be honest. I don't like the idea of being on the stage with a twice-convicted racist, but this job is so important that we need to stand up here and debate these issues and tell the good people of this state what we plan to do for our citizens," Lake said, referring to a controversy involving the firing of an African-American policy adviser by the Arizona state Senate in 2015. Hobbs was the Democratic minority leader in the Senate at the time.

Talonya Adams was fired by the state Senate after complaining that she was paid less than her white colleagues. She filed and won two civil lawsuits against the Senate alleging sex and racial discrimination. Hobbs was not named as a defendant, but she and her chief of staff were called to testify in the cases. Adams was paid $300,000 in damages on Sept. 21, 2022.

It was inaccurate for Lake to say Hobbs was "convicted" in those civil cases, but Hobbs was not present at the event to defend herself.

"I wish, by the way, that my opponent were here," Lake said. "The people here in the media, some are from national media, they never pin her down on where she stands."

"The media chases after me," Lake continued. "I always speak to the media, but she won't answer the questions. She won't answer the questions and she didn't have the courage to be here."

\u201c.@KariLake: "I always speak to the media, but she won't answer the questions. She won't answer the questions & she didn't have the courage to be here. I think that should tell you something. She's hiding something. What is she hiding? I think we know: her terrible record."\u201d
— Kari Lake (@Kari Lake) 1665025277


The Hobbs campaign insists that its strategy will prevail in November.

"Arizonans are rejecting Kari Lake's extreme and dangerous positions that are so far outside the mainstream," campaign manager Nicole Demont said in a statement to ABC News on Wednesday. "We're confident that sanity will beat chaos and Sec. Hobbs will be elected in November."

Watch the town hall event:

Kari Lake puts on a clinic for how pro-life Republicans should respond to abortion questions



Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake performed a rhetorical jiu jitsu flip of a reporter who tried to corner her on abortion at a speaking event.

"Tell me, if abortion is effectively banned in the state right now, tell me, is that something that you support?" a reporter asked Lake at the RNC Hispanic Community Center in South Phoenix last week. The Donald Trump-endorsed firebrand responded by turning the reporter's question around to highlight her Democratic opponent's abortion-rights extremism.

"I support saving as many lives as possible," Lake answered. "And what I really want to know, and I've been waiting — I tune into you guys all the time — I want to know where Katie Hobbs stands. But I never hear you guys ask her that."

\u201cWATCH: @KariLake on Abortion. \nAlso \u2014 where is @katiehobbs?\u201d
— Kari Lake (@Kari Lake) 1664670734

"I'm pro-life," she continued. "My plan would be that every woman who walks into an abortion clinic know that there are options out there, they don't have to choose that. There's families who would love to adopt a baby. And right now, the way it's been going, they go in and they only have one option. Nobody tells them that there's other options."

Abortion has surged to the forefront of Arizona state politics after a judge ruled that the state's 1864 law banning nearly all abortions should be enforced after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state for Arizona, seized on the issue and vowed to repeal the abortion ban if elected governor, calling out Republicans for remaining silent on the state's abortion ban.

"Make no mistake: if elected governor, Lake will seek to further take away Arizonans’ reproductive freedoms and put millions of peoples’ lives on the line," the Hobbs campaign said in a statement.

“Under this ban, it’s Arizona women and families who will suffer the most,” Hobbs said. “And as a mother, I’m furious that my 20-year-old daughter will have fewer rights than I did 50 years ago. The overwhelming majority of Arizonans support access to safe and legal abortion. This decision is a direct affront to what we the people, the voters, Arizonans, want.”

At a press conference Saturday, Hobbs added, "We deserve the health care that is our right, and access to safe, legal abortions, period."

Lake sidestepped the reporter's question on the Arizona law and demanded that journalists get more specifics from Hobbs on what limitations, if any, she supports for abortion.

"We want to help our women," she said. "If they're afraid we want to help them. We want to give women health care. And I want to help people. But I really challenge you, and I'm happy to get back to you on this when you find out where Katie Hobbs stands. Because let me tell you where she stands. She supports abortion right up until birth and after birth. She supports if a baby survives a botched abortion that that baby die on a cold metal tray. And none of you ever try to get her to try to talk about her stance. So get back to me after you do."