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Maricopa County, the epicenter of the lion’s share of election-related woes related to the midterm races in 2022, has started a hand-count audit to reportedly “ensure the accuracy of the 2022 General Election results,” per the Maricopa County Elections Department.
However, according to a report from Just the News, around 400,000 midterm ballots are still uncounted in Maricopa. This adds to the election chaos that began on Election Day when voting machines in the county started malfunctioning.
Per Just the News, 20 percent of the ballot tabulation machines had problems on Tuesday, and a reported 1.1 million ballots have been counted so far. As of Thursday afternoon, the gubernatorial, senatorial, secretary of state, and attorney general’s races had not been called.
Via the Arizona Secretary of State’s website, a total of 1,921,643 ballots were cast in the 2022 midterms, with a reported 46.37 percent voter turnout. Furthermore, the acting secretary of state overseeing Maricopa County’s vote-counting confusion is Katie Hobbs, the Democrat gubernatorial nominee.
Despite questions from critics on whether overseeing her own election was ethical, Hobbs declined to recuse herself.
Another report from Just the News highlighted comments from the chairman of Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors, Bill Gates, regarding the problems on Election Day with vote tabulators:
“What happened yesterday should not be used to question the integrity of the election. Again, everyone who was checked in who showed up with a valid I.D. had the opportunity to vote and those votes are going to count. The 17,000 or so that I mentioned that didn’t go through the…tabulator at the vote center, they have been secured.”
Despite Gates’s claims, voters are understandably frustrated with the voting system in Arizona, as the process to count ballots has elongated. Republican gubernatorial nominee in Arizona, Kari Lake, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Thursday morning, “One of the reasons that I will win is the voters in Arizona are tired of shoddy elections that are run by imbeciles.”
Despite the pressure on Maricopa County to perform quickly and efficiently, a spokesperson for Maricopa Elections reportedly told News Nation correspondent Ali Bradley that most ballots “won’t be done being counted until after the weekend. They initially anticipated 95-99% of ballots to be completed by Friday.”