The Arizona Republican Party has filed a lawsuit seeking to extend voting hours, joined by the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the campaigns for GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters and GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake.
MSNBC’s Vaughan Hillyard reported on the lawsuit from Arizona, saying that the Republicans had cited issues that about 20 percent of the voting centers had in Maricopa County with the tabulating machines.
All votes in Arizona are by paper ballot, Hillyard noted, and “the issue was the tabulating machines at some locations were not accepting some of the ballots and rejecting them,” however, county officials had confirmed those votes “will still count, they will just not be tabulated until tomorrow when they are taken to the main tabulating center in downtown Phoenix.”
There were other complaints about long lines, Hillyard noted, but “there should be no suggestion that this will not be an accurate election here in the state of Arizona at this time.” The paper ballots meant there was a record of the votes, he added, and “[even] Kari Lake agreed with me on that point.”
“And Vaughn, just to be clear, was the issue with the tabulating machine sorted out?” asked Rachel Maddow. “Were they able to resolve the issue and they’re just concerned people who may have left when the problems were still happening need extra time to come back?”
That was the “primary concern” the Republicans were voicing, Hillyard confirmed. “We don’t have widespread report of people leaving en masse. To be very clear, this is a small subset.”
There were about 223 voting centers in Maricopa County, he said, and voters could go to whatever one they chose. Officials had urged voters to go to one two miles down the road when they had issues, and the issue was indeed resolved. It turned out to be a printer problem, said Hillyard, with some printers not printing dark enough for the tabulating machines to read them. County officials confirmed this was the issue, and posted multiple tweets and other communications with instructions for voters:
“They have since fixed the printers and that’s why you have seen these lines go down and this return to normal,” but that had “not kept Republicans from trying to keep them open at least a little longer.”
The issues with the Maricopa County tabulating machines had sparked conspiracy theories as NBC News reporter Ben Collins noted Tuesday afternoon:
County officials spent hours trying to battle misinformation, posting multiple tweets along these lines:
GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel confirmed that the RNC was joining the lawsuit in a series of tweets:
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
