Earlier this week, former American president Donald Trump and his followers seized on technical issues with ballot tabulation machines in the battleground state of Arizona and falsely claimed it was evidence of an election scam by the Democrats.
The false claims were made after video emerged of voters being turned away from polling stations in Maricopa, Arizona’s largest county, and officials asking them to head to a different voting center.
The elections officials also flagged printer issues with ballot tabulators in nearly 20% of the county’s polling locations but made clear that voters can cast ballots without concerns.
"We also have redundancy in place. If you can't put the ballot in the tabulator, then you can simply place it here where you see the number three and this is a secure box where those ballots will be kept for later this evening, where we'll bring them in here to central count to tabulate them," Maricopa official explained.
There is nothing fishy regarding the voting process. The issues in a handful of places around the US are well within the normal range of glitches to be expected in thousands of jurisdictions with millions of people voting, a senior official at the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stated.
However, Trump contradicted state officials claims who said that the paper ballots will be tabulated later and posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, telling voters to stay in line.
The state's Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, also seized on the machine glitches, tweeting out a quote "voter alert".
She has previously echoed Trump's false claims that the 2020 elections were stolen from him. When election results were announced, she nodded toward the issues with the machines.
"We had a big day today. And don't let those cheaters and crooks think anything different. Don't let them doubt. Don't let them put doubt in you."
Arizona was central in the false claims by Trump and his followers that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, after his narrow loss to Joe Biden in the state. The state was ground zero for Trump’s attempts to overturn his White House loss and in this year’s midterms, it’s the only state where all four major statewide candidates are election deniers.
An election official in Arizona said that the malfunctions in ballot tabulation machines were "disappointing" and correctly predicted that election deniers such as Trump would "exploit" the issue.