Early Tuesday morning, Charlie Kirk, the influential right-wing activist with close ties to the Trump family, shared a video of a poll worker in conservative Anthem, Arizona, announcing to a line of waiting voters that one of the polling place’s two tabulators was broken. The other successfully scanned completed ballots only 75% of the time.
“It could be a printer issue, or it could be the tabulator itself,” the Maricopa County poll worker said before adding that voters experiencing difficulty could simply drop off their ballot in a box attached to the tabulator, labeled “Box Three,” to be counted later at a tabulation center — the method used by most Arizona counties.
The tabulation issues were affecting about 20% of polling locations, the county’s Board of Supervisors chair Bill Gates (R) said in a video posted on social media, before emphasizing that voters could also go to another polling place if they were experiencing issues. (Voters in Arizona can vote in multiple locations within a county rather than being bound to a neighborhood-specific polling location.)
Within a few hours, the county had identified and apologized for the issue: printer settings. “It appears some of the printers were not producing dark enough timing marks on the ballots,” a press release read. County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) assured voters that “every legal vote will be tabulated,” regardless of the machine errors.
But it was too late. Republican politicians had already primed voters to expect under-handed tactics from Maricopa County, a Democratic stronghold home to more than half of Arizona’s population and also the target of the conspiracy theory-fueled “audit” in 2021 that Republicans used to push false voter fraud claims. They knew what was really going on.
The video Kirk shared showed that people waiting in line were angry. Some began reciting GOP talking points about ballot tabulators: “You need to get rid of the machines!” someone says off camera. “I don’t trust it to go in the box, the box may never make it down there! That happens all the time,” another woman said before leaving the line.
“I don’t trust it to go in the box, the box may never make it down there! That happens all the time.”
- Maricopa County voter, responding to ballot tabulation issues
Before long, “cheating” was trending on Twitter, and a popular pro-Donald Trump forum had pinned a post on “Box 3” to the top of its page, NBC News reported.
Around the web, commenters said the problems were “by design” and evidence that “Democrats are cheating again,” according to the Election Integrity Partnership, which tracks election-related misinformation and disinformation.
Republican politicians across the country, especially in Arizona, have raised the prospect of rejecting election outcomes if they lose — tapping into widespread GOP beliefs of systematic election fraud — and only accepting them if they win.
But on Tuesday, the Arizona GOP faced a more immediate problem: How could they incorporate the tabulation problems into their existing false claims about widespread election theft without discouraging supporters enough to make them skip voting altogether? The answer: Demonize Maricopa County, but urge voters to stick with the process.
“There’s a lot of bad things going on. ... They want to delay you out of voting,” Trump intoned ominously on Truth Social, urging Maricopa County voters to stay in line.
“Go overwhelm the BS,” Donald Trump Jr., his son, wrote on Twitter. “If you absolutely have to come back later, but cast your vote at all costs!!!”
Mark Finchem, the Arizona GOP secretary of state candidate who pushed the legally impossible proposal to “decertify” the 2020 election results, also weighed in on Twitter. “Why is it always Maricopa?” tweeted Finchem. Later, he tweeted at a congressional candidate who said, “this will be the last illegally ran election in AZ!” because Finchem would bring “competence” to the secretary of state’s office.
“Democrats are hoping you will get discouraged and go home,” Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters wrote after wondering whether the problems were “incompetence or something worse.”
Two others — state GOP chair Kelli Ward and Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for governor — claimed that the problem disproportionately affected conservative areas. There was no clear evidence supporting those claims, and neither Lake’s campaign nor the Arizona GOP responded to HuffPost’s questions.
“PSA: Hey, Maricopa County voters! Go vote in a Democrat stronghold. The machines and ballots seem to be fine there,” Ward wrote.
In “the heart of liberal Phoenix,” Lake said, “they’ve had zero problems with their machines today.”
Still, as the day progressed, there were signs that Republicans were changing their strategy to adapt to the machine issues. In a Tuesday morning flier, Ward urged voters, “do not put your ballot in ‘box 3’ or ‘door 3.’” A few hours later, Finchem shared a graphic from the Lake campaign advising supporters to use the boxes “as a last resort.”
And, in a lawsuit filed in a Maricopa County court Tuesday, the national Republican Party sought to extend polling place hours until 10 p.m. After a 20-minute hearing, a judge denied the request.