Valley voting computers go down for five minutes on Election Day
Nov 6, 2018, 12:09 PM | Updated: 1:56 pm
PHOENIX – Voting system computers were down throughout Maricopa County for about five minutes on Election Day, Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes confirmed Tuesday.
“There was a little bit of a concern because it was a system-wide hiccup,” he said. “We are narrowing it down to make sure that doesn’t happen through the rest of the day.”
At a noon press conference, Fontes said the cause of the problem was being investigated and the impact on voting was minimal.
“I think the system was down for a total of about five minutes,” he said.
“Our team was on top of it. Whatever the glitch was, we got back into it.”
Fontes said voting was impacted at around 11:30 a.m. for about 20 minutes, but everything was back up and running.
“No matter what is happening, our systems are ready to go,” he said.
As soon as the problem was noticed, Fontes said he asked city clerks so start printing out paper rosters, but the system was back up before they were needed.
“We’re excited where we are right now,” he said.
Earlier Tuesday, Fontes said technical problems were nearly non-existent, with the biggest issue being a polling site in Chandler that couldn’t be accessed because the property had been foreclosed overnight.
Heading into the election, Fontes expressed confidence there would’t be a repeat of the problems in the August primary election, when 62 county sites didn’t open on time because all the equipment hadn’t been set up.
KTAR News 92.3 FM brings you complete election coverage all day Tuesday, including post-election coverage until 10 p.m.
