Maricopa County Responds to AG, Expected to Certify Election Monday

Arizona's Maricopa County pushed back on Republican claims that voting difficulties disenfranchised voters on election day.

The county's elections board responded to a letter from the state attorney general's office Sunday, with Division Chief, Civil Services Division Thomas Liddy addressing Assistant AG Jennifer Wright in a legal response.

"Our response is available for the public to read in its entirety and details how Maricopa County followed state and federal laws to ensure every voter was provided the opportunity to cast a ballot," Board of Supervisors Chair Bill Gates, a Republican, wrote in a statement.

Gates plans to canvass Maricopa County's election results as required by law to be done by Monday, Nov. 28. A news conference has been called.

"Accountability promotes responsibility," Arizona GOP Attorney General-nominee Abe Hamadeh tweeted Saturday amid a recount in his own election, where he trailed by 510 votes. "Elections that are mismanaged or perceived as unfair will only sow the seeds of doubt to the system that holds this country together."

The report from the county noted malfunctions occurred at least 43 and as many as 63 of the county's 223 vote centers.

"Maricopa County experienced unanticipated printing problems in 31% of its vote centers," Liddy wrote to Wright. "These problems caused some ballots to be printed in a way that prevented some of the precinct based tabulators from reading them, although all the ballots were easily readable by the human eye.

"When compared to the total number of voters who participated in the 2022 General Election, fewer than 1% of ballots cast were affected by these printer issues. But importantly, every lawful voter was still able to cast his or her ballot.

"No voter was disenfranchised because of the difficulty the county experienced with some of its printers. Every voter was provided a ballot by which he or she could record their votes, and all such ballots cast by lawful voters were tabulated, whether in the vote center or at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center.

"The printing issues, leading to precinct-based tabulators being unable to tabulate some of the votes cast, was regrettable. But it did not violate the uniformity statutes, and any suggestion that it did is unfounded."

Here are the key points in the response to the elections review requested by Wright, as outlined in tweets by Maricopa County officials Sunday night:

1. "County's Door 3 procedures are lawful & every single one of the 16,724 legal ballots deposited in secure Door 3 on Election Day was counted."
2. "County's voter check out procedures are lawful & of 206 voters who went to a 2nd location to vote, 193 cast legal ballots that were counted."

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