MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz. — Election day is four weeks away and on Tuesday, the Arizona Secretary of State's Office put Maricopa County ballot tabulators to the test.
It's hours of processes making sure what an estimated 2.1 million Maricopa County voters will put on their ballot in the General Election is counted correctly by the county's tabulators.
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"There's so much attention to elections these days, and Maricopa County has really sort of been the center of a lot of exposure. We want people to know that we do have safe and fair elections, " Jennifer Liewer, Maricopa County Deputy Elections Director, said.
The blind test was with more than 2,500 ballots brought by the Secretary of State's office.
For the first time since 2006, Maricopa County voters are voting a two-page ballot.
"That means there's close to 4.2 million pieces of paper that need to be counted through this equipment," Scott Jarrett, Maricopa County Elections Director said during a county live stream of the logic and accuracy test.
The test begins with observers from both the Maricopa County Republican Party and Maricopa County Democratic Party checking first that everything is "zeroed out" — that no votes have been counted.
Then tabulation of the ballots begins with the selected on-site tabulators and central tabulators. Accessible voting devices are also a part of the selected test group of equipment.
"We then also check what's called adjudication, where, if a ballot can't be read, for some reason, we have live human beings who are looking at that ballot and trying to determine voter intent," Liewer said.
Ultimately, both Republican and Democrat observers agree that the races matched what the Secretary of State's Office's results had shown, meaning the county's tabulators are accurate and Maricopa County passed the logic and accuracy test for the Secretary of State.
The process though started weeks ago to test every piece of equipment including stress-testing new printers following struggles in the 2022 election.
"Since 2022 we have replaced all of our ballot on-demand printers, so the printers that are out at the vote centers are actually a larger, more robust printer, so that we can ensure that those ballots are printed accurately, we've done stress testing, and we hope that everything will go smooth," Liewer said.
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Decision 2024
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