Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Director Bill Gates, has released a report on election day irregularities. It is the response to the letter sent by Arizona Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Wright, who formally requested by letter, further information about what happened.
The report addresses one of the most relevant issues of that election, referring to what happened with the so-called "Gate 3" ballots. This refers to where the votes that could not be counted at the time due to machine failures, were stored. The objective was to collect these votes so that they could be counted later, according to the official Maricopa County Twitter account.
"Gate 3"
The county's Gate 3 procedures are legal, and every one of the 16,724 legal ballots deposited at the secure Gate 3 on Election Day was counted.
The supervisor quotes an excerpt from the report sent to the ADA, which states that.
The failure of the printers to print ballots capable of being read by precinct-based tabulators cannot violate the Free and Equal clause when (1) all voters were still provided reasonable, lawful options for voting, (2) Maricopa County’s contingency plan of instructing voters to place their ballots into a ballot box to be tabulated later is used by eight counties in the state, and (3) no Arizona laws require ballots to be allocated in polling locations using precinct-based tabulators.
1) County's Door 3 procedures are lawful & every single one of the 16,724 legal ballots deposited in secure Door 3 on Election Day was counted. pic.twitter.com/99Ge9qMiDR
- Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) November 27, 2022
Citizens who were unable to vote
To this, he adds that
County’s voter checkout procedures are lawful & of 206 voters who went to a 2nd location to vote, 193 cast legal ballots that were counted.
This proves that critics of the process were right when they say that some voters were unable to cast their ballots. The reason is that, when they realized they could not vote in one voting center, they wanted to exit the process to vote in another. But the system was not working, so the process was not finished. And when they went to another center, the machines would not allow them to vote. The system had registered that they had already done so in the first one.
Bill Gates, in a statement, says, "Our response is available for the public to read in its entirety and details how Maricopa County followed the state and federal laws to ensure every voter was provided the opportunity to cast a ballot."
Chairman @billgatesaz: "The AG's Office sent their letter with urgency and we responded with urgency." Full statement: pic.twitter.com/vBNMtErX2d
- Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) November 27, 2022
