(RepublicanWire.org) – Maricopa County Director of Elections Scott Jarrett testified Thursday at Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s election challenge that the county identified multiple locations where the wrong size image was printed on ballots on Election Day.
He further stated he was aware of some ballot printer settings being changed on Election Day.
Hours-long lines developed at many Maricopa polling places on Nov. 8 when ballot printer settings caused tabulators not to be able to read ballots.
Republican National Committee lawyer Mark Sonnenklar testified Wednesday his team of roving lawyers on Election Day found these problems happened in 132 locations.
The county says the printer issue occurred at 70 polling sites.
Given that Republicans typically vote 3-to-1 over Democrats on Election Day and the 17,000 votes separating Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs, Sonneklar testified, “There’s no question in my mind that had there not been tabulator issues at 132 vote centers, this election would have ended up with Kari Lake winning.”
The problem that the Lake legal team identified after inspecting randomly selected ballots from Election Day versus pre-printed mail-in ballots sent to voters was that a 19-inch image was printed on to 20-inch ballot paper.
The difference between the two ballots can been seen in how close the bar code was to the edge of the paper and the positioning of the candidates on the page.
These differences apparently made the tabulators unable to read the ballots.
Lake attorney Kurt Olsen asked Thursday, “Is it your testimony that the printer set changes that led to the so-called ‘shrink to fit’ issue was that done on Election Day?”
Jarrett responded, “That’s correct.”
The county elections official had previously testified that he was aware of these settings changes occurring at three locations.
On Thursday, Olsen directed Jarrett’s attention to his testimony of the previous day when the official said he was not aware of printer settings being changed on Election day to 19 inches.
Jarrett responded that he did not know the exact measurement at issue, saying a fit to print setting resulted in a “slightly smaller” image being placed on a 20-inch paper ballot.
Olsen wondered why Jarrett did not mention the fit to print issue during the previous day’s testimony.
“I wasn’t asked about that,” Jarrett responded. He added that the ballot “definition” was not set at 19 inches.
Jarrett recounted that he learned of the issue during a post-election audit a few days after Election Day. The audit showed what he called “a fit to paper issue” on ballots rejected by the tabulators and placed in so-called “Door 3” for later counting at the county’s central vote headquarters.
Jarrett said the county only identified three locations with the fit to paper issue, though again at least 70 locations, according to Maricopa, or 132, according to Lake’s legal team, had tabulator problems.
Olsen asked if the Anthem polling site was one of the places the county had identified, and Jarrett responded it was not.
In Anthem, north of Phoenix, people had waited in line approximately two hours to vote. The wait time was the same around 6 p.m.
Jarrett testified that the county did not direct the printer settings to be changed at the sites he said the printer image problems occurred.
He further stated that during the county’s ballot test printings prior to the machines being used, no fit to print issues were identified at any of the sites.
But when Olsen asked how Jarrett knew there were no issues, his response was no one reported any back.
“They never identified it during any of the set-ups,” Jarret said.
