Maricopa County officials brace for possible Election Day glitches

PHOENIX – Maricopa County election officials know all too well that no amount of planning can account for every possible thing that could go wrong at the polls.

That’s why they’ve spent so much time preparing so that if something does go wrong on Election Day, it won’t prevent voters from casting their ballots.

“We try to create situations where if one thing happens we are able to shift and adjust as that occurs. … We are going to do our best, but we know that there will be issues that come up,” Jennifer Liewer, Maricopa County deputy elections director, told KTAR News 92.3 FM on Monday morning.

One only needs go back two years to find an example of an unexpected issue that sent Maricopa County election officials scrambling.

During the 2022 midterm election, a problem arose with the in-person ballot tabulation process at some vote centers on Election Day. The glitch was later traced to the use of heavier and larger paper, which caused the printers to misfire to the extent that some vote center tabulating machines had trouble reading the ballots.

“People need to keep in mind, it could be a whole list of different things that can happen,” Liewer said. “It can be a technical issue. It can be we are locked out of the building when our poll workers show up on Election Day. It can be an issue between voters. It can be anything you could possibly imagine.”

Maricopa County election officials try to have solutions in place

Liewer said Maricopa County election officials try their best to anticipate potential issues and have backup plans, which they refer to as “redundancies.”

For example, when the tabulation issue arose in 2022, voters could deposit their completed ballots into a compartment known as “Box 3” within the tabulating machines for safe keeping. The ballots were then taken to the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center to be counted after the vote centers closed.

“We try to have as many … things in place so that we can ensure that people can still vote,” Liewer said.

Why ballot size is a wild card for 2024 Maricopa County election

One of the biggest concerns heading into the 2024 Maricopa County election is the size of the ballots. Inflated by a lengthy judicial retention section and 13 statewide ballot measures, the ballot takes up both sides of two pages.

The 2024 General Election is days away! Check out your sample ballot before heading to a vote center at https://t.co/5s1LMk1ymR. pic.twitter.com/wBUag3hoxl

— Maricopa County Elections (@MaricopaVote) November 3, 2024

“We’ve … been communicating heavily with the public about the two-page ballot and that it’s going to take people time when they’re in voting booths to fill that ballot out, and so to come prepared, to print out their sample ballot, go through, do their research before they head to the polls,” Liewer said.

With an average of 79 contests per ballot for the 2024 Maricopa County election, voters could take longer than expected to fill in their preferred circles. That could lead to long lines, something officials have been trying to warn the public about.

“If a line gets long at a vote center, we are so fortunate in this county that we have a vote center, vote-anywhere model and we can direct people to a different vote center,” Liewer said.

To make that easier, an interactive map of locations with wait times can be found at Locations.Maricopa.Vote.

Will two-page ballot show counting for Maricopa County election?

In addition, the ballot size could lead to unforeseen issues with tabulation.

“In the past, if we had 2.1 million voters, we had 2.1 million pieces of paper,” Liewer said. “Now, we’re looking at upwards of over 4 million pieces of paper that we’ll be handling here in our tabulation center, and those ballots need to be removed from their envelope [and] they need to go through our high-speed tabulators.”

It remains to be seen if that slows down the tabulation process on Tuesday and afterward as workers finishing counting votes from all the early ballots that were received close to or on Election Day.

“There are a lot of intricacies in Arizona’s election laws, but what we can promise people is that we will be transparent about how we do our business,” Liewer said. “They can log on at any point today, tomorrow, in the days to come and they can watch all of the activity live on the internet … and we encourage people who have questions to do just that.”

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Colton Krolak contributed to this report.

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