Missteps, Mistakes, and Misinformation About Maricopa County
Over the course of Election Day in Arizona, various election process errors occurred, sparking statements by election officials, reports by the media, and anecdotal accounts posted to social media by voters themselves.
The majority of the process errors we tracked occurred in Maricopa County including an early-morning situation involving the malfunctioning of tabulators and reports of ballot printing errors that further impacted tabulator issues.
This Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) blog post analyzes the different narratives that emerged around the midterm elections in Arizona and explores the spread of both conspiratorial and authoritative information about voting issues.
Analysis of conversation across mainstream platforms highlights the complicated nature of sharing election information in real time. On a positive note, Arizona election officials rapidly and clearly communicated the nature of the issues, the scope of the problem, and how they were remedying it. Further, in light of these real issues, much conversation concerned legitimate criticism of voting technology issues.
However, this did not stop the emergence of some misleading frames implying harmful intent or tying to broader or established conspiracy theories of election fraud.
Photo above: The old Maricopa County Courthouse in downtown Phoenix. Photo by Bikesharedue via Flickr (Public Domain)
This Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) analysis was written by Taylor Agajanian, Joseph S. Schafer, Kayla Duskin, Rachel E. Moran, and Charles Simon with contributions from Zarine Kharazian, Emma S. Spiro, Kate Starbird, and Ashlyn B. Aske. (University of Washington Center for an Informed Public).
Introduction
On Election Day last week, the EIP team was tracking the spread of rumors around voting procedures. Much of our attention was on Arizona, a key battleground state, where legitimate reports of voting machine malfunctions mixed with misleading narratives alleging intentional attempts to commit election fraud. Arizona was primed to be a focal point for election-related rumors in part due to the centrality of Maricopa County in the 2020 election’s “Sharpie Gate” conspiracies, in addition to the hotly contested gubernatorial race between current Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Republican candidate Kari Lake.
We previously wrote about similar attempts to recast election administration errors in the 2022 Arizona primaries when election officials in Pinal County, Arizona failed to print enough ballots to meet the demand for in-person voting. Online discussion about the error baselessly framed it as an intentional act by Hobbs, the Democratic candidate and Arizona’s current secretary of state, and linked it to broader voter fraud narratives. The high-profile nature of the gubernatorial race between Hobbs and Lake has compounded the saliency of false narratives about the Arizona election. Lake has garnered significant attention for amplifying baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election and declining to confirm that she would accept the results of the gubernatorial election if she loses. The Democratic candidate, Katie Hobbs, has been in the spotlight because of her position as Arizona’s Secretary of State. In addition to facing criticism for ballot shortage problems in the primaries, Hobbs has received pressure from across the political spectrum to recuse herself from election-related duties. Two former Arizona secretaries of state, representing each party, called for Hobbs’ recusal in order to “avoid even the appearance of conflict” given that the election was likely to be contentious.
In the early hours of Election Day, November 8, election officials in Arizona announced issues with the tabulators on some voting machines, and asked voters facing these issues to place their ballots in the secure box on the machine labeled “Box 3.” In the hours and days that followed, rumors, misleading information, fact-checking and reports of further issues with voting-related technology spread online. This blogpost analyzes the different narratives that emerged around the Arizona midterm election and explores the spread of both conspiratorial and authoritative information about voting issues.
Process Errors Issues on Election Day Spur Rumors and Confusion
Over the course of Election Day in Arizona, various election process errors occurred, sparking statements by election officials, reports by the media, and anecdotal accounts posted to social media by voters themselves. The majority of the process errors we tracked occurred in Maricopa County including an early-morning situation involving the malfunctioning of tabulators at 20% of voting centers in the county. There were also reports of ballot printing errors and printers malfunctioning in Mesa and a singular incident of a voting location closure in Buckeye.
Early in the morning of Election Day voters in Arizona began reporting issues at their voting locations. These concerns were brought to greater attention on Twitter by tweets posted in a span of 10 minutes between 7:22 am and 7:33 am Arizona time by Tyler Bowyer (the COO of Turning Point USA), Charlie Kirk (the founder and president of Turning Point USA), and Benny Johnson (Turning Point USA’s chief creative officer and a television host on Newsmax) sharing a video of a poll worker describing an issue with the machines that tabulate votes. Collectively, these three posts of the video got over 80,000 retweets, quote tweets, and replies by 5 p.m. local time on Election Day.
At 8:11 a.m., the Maricopa County Elections Department shared a post via their official Twitter account advising voters that if the tabulators at their voting site aren’t working they can still vote by placing their ballot in a secure ballot box marked with the number three. At 8:52 a.m. the Maricopa County Elections Department shared a video stating that about 20% of voting locations were having issues with ballot tabulators. Along with acknowledging the issue, Bill Gates (the Chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors) and Stephen Richer (the Maricopa County Recorder) stated that election officials were trying to fix the problem and that in the event of malfunctioning tabulators voters can place their ballots in a secure box to be counted later. Together, these two tweets gained 9,214 retweets, quote tweets, and replies by 5 p.m. Arizona time.
Reports about these tabulator issues and others were picked up by mainstream media, with The New York Times, CNN, NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, and Reuters among others tweeting about the story. Despite their large follower counts on Twitter, tweets by these news outlets failed to gain the level of spread achieved by the original videos. We found that early tweets posted by accounts with small to moderate sized audiences gained far more attention overall than tweets shared later in the day by news outlets with massive follower accounts.
Table 1: The most retweeted Twitter accounts involved in the discussion of tabulator errors in Arizona.
News about the tabulator malfunction spread as a result of official announcements from Maricopa County election officials, amplification and concern particularly from right-leaning influencers, and anecdotal “evidence” including videos and images purportedly showing the issues in real time. This was also the case for concerns that the tabulator issues were being exacerbated by poor printing of ballots due to printer and toner issues at voting locations. For example, concerns around the improper printing of ballots seem to have begun to spread widely when Tyler Bowyer (Turning Point USA) — who began the day by tweeting screenshots of messages sent to him by conservative voters experiencing voting issues — shared a tweet with a photo of his own ballot with poorly printed text. Bowyer then retweeted and shared anecdotes from other voters sharing concerns around their printed ballots. Maricopa County tweeted a confirmation of the printer issues on November 9, highlighting that an issue with printers not producing dark enough timing marks on ballots impacted an estimated 17,000 (less than 7% of Election Day) ballots.
Figure 1: A plot showing the tweets per minute related to the printer malfunctions in Maricopa County. After Tyler Bowyer tweeted about the issue, attention to this topic increased dramatically.
Participatory Sharing of Malfunction Evidence
In response to these issues, we see widespread sharing of evidence by online users of their personal experiences attempting to vote in Maricopa County. These included numerous videos and images which are purported to be of Maricopa County polling stations, as seen below in Figures 2 and 3. These pieces of evidence were also solicited by online right-wing influencers such as Bowyer and Charlie Kirk, who asked for people to text and/or email them what they were seeing and hearing, while talking in the context of the Arizona election troubles.
Figures 2 and 3: Example tweets of users sharing personal experiences attempting to vote, as evidence of election administration problems
Figure 4: A screenshot of the Charlie Kirk Show, which has a line along the bottom asking people to email his show. In the live stream, Charlie Kirk asked people to send him what their experience in Arizona was, which would constitute similar evidence-gathering behaviors akin to what we were seeing Twitter accounts doing.
As Election Day Progresses, Rumors Proliferate
In light of malfunctions with vote tabulators, Election Officials implored voters facing issues to place their ballots in the locked box underneath voting machines while they were working to fix the tabulator issues. Narratives emerged online expressing distrust in “Box 3”. We observed misleading claims about the process around tabulating these votes and conspiracy theories about Democrats intentionally undermining election technology to force voters to have their votes manually (dis)counted. In the following section, we outline the narratives that emerged in response to technology issues including online conversation detailing what voters should do at the polls in Arizona (and other states), and who is responsible for the issues and their intentions.
To provide clarification to voter’s following the tabulation issue, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office tweeted assuring voter’s that they can still vote by dropping their ballot in a secure dropbox, colloquially referred to as Box 3, Drawer 3, or Door 3. This clarification was met with skepticism by some, including a retweet by Arizona GOP Chairwoman Dr. Kelli Ward where she refuted the Recorder’s Office advice and urged her followers to spoil their ballots over and over until they are accepted by the voting machine (Figure 5). Following Ward’s tweet, Charlie Kirk posted to Twitter echoing her advice, though Kirk’s tweet added that placing your ballot in “Box 3” is a “worse case scenario” only after one has attempted the ballot spoiling measure. While ballot spoiling is a legitimate election measure, the framing of ballot spoiling as a tactic to mitigate fraud serves to amplify unfounded conspiracy theories around election fraud more broadly.
Figure 5: Retweet of Maricopa County Recorder’s Office by Arizona GOP Chairwoman Dr. Kelli Ward.
Conspiracy theories about the ballot counting process were widely shared on social media, mainly regarding “Box 3” and the remote tabulation of ballots “downtown,” referring to speculation that ballots tabulated at the central Phoenix voting center may be thrown out or switched to a different candidate. Ballots that are placed into Box 3 and then scanned centrally are handled with a full bipartisan chain of custody, and are only tabulated with observers present at the central location, yet claims that central counting downtown were suspicious spread widely early in the timeline of Maricopa County election problems. These conspiracy theories draw on older tropes surrounding Sharpie Gate beliefs in 2020, which were also skeptical of central counting when ballots could not be scanned at the local polling station.
Figure 6: A cumulative plot showing the spread of narratives related to “Box 3” and taking votes “downtown.”
In the afternoon, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake held a press conference stating the process errors were “not normal.” During the conference, parts of which were aired on major networks like Fox News (see Figure 7) with clips later shared on Telegram and other platforms, Lake implied that voting machines were deliberately broken at voting centers in Republican areas in Maricopa County, leading her to change her voting location to “liberal Phoenix” where the voting machines were working. In the same press conference, Lake placed blame on her opponent, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, and reignited her calls for Hobbs recusal from the election oversight process.
Figure 7: A screenshot from Fox News of Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, holding a press conference outside a voting center in Phoenix following the casting of her vote.
Former president Donald Trump posted to Truth Social conflating the Arizona process errors with election issues occurring in other swing states. In his thread he alleges that the election errors were not being covered by the media and urged his followers to protest. In another post about Arizona specifically, he urges voters not to get out of line and asserts that election errors and delays are a deliberate attempt to steal the election, though he does not specify by whom.
Figure 8: A screenshot of a Truth Social post from former president Donald Trump which claims that the machine errors and delays in election administration are deliberate to allow an unspecified group of people to steal the election.
Narratives alleging election fraud in Arizona related to process errors also spread outside of English-language Twitter conversations. Notably, this included extreme calls for violence by a Mandarin-speaking Twitter user who has since been suspended by the Twitter platform after calling for Americans to shoot people that were committing election fraud.
An analysis of the top URLs shared within conversations about tabulator issues shows that the most shared domains, seen in Table 2, are official sites maintained by Maricopa County government that helped voters find the nearest polling places as well as estimated wait times. It is encouraging to see that authoritative sources meant to help voters received the most shares online, with most tweets instructing audiences how to find nearby polling places if their first choice was affected by issues.
Table 2: The most shared domains linked in tweets about Arizona tabulator errors.
However, six of the 10 most retweeted tweets sharing these links included or amplified false or misleading information about the validity of placing ballots into the secure box (“Box 3”). For example, the following tweet received over 2,400 retweets:
Figure 9: A screenshot of one of the most highly retweeted Tweets sharing the official Maricopa.vote website
While the sharing of official URLs within tweets can direct audiences to authoritative information, their effectiveness is tempered when the tweet itself contains misleading or uncorroborated information that erroneously leads audiences to believe their vote may not be counted.
Election Day Draws to a Close in Arizona
The campaigns for Lake and U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters and the Republican National Committee sued Maricopa County to keep the polls open until 10 p.m. MT. The lawsuit, filed shortly before 5 p.m. on Election Day, also asked that the County instruct polling inspectors to “properly ‘check out'” on the e-pollbook any voter who has spoiled a ballot and has chosen not to obtain a replacement ballot.” Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Tim Ryan denied the request based on the court’s finding that “all the individuals in the declarations filed either a provisional ballot or a direct ballot [and that] the court does not have any evidence that there was a voter who was precluded the right to vote'' and that due to those undisputed facts, the other elements of the complaints were without merit [1]. Polls closed, as planned, at 7 p.m. MT.
Since then, Arizona election officials have been counting votes and, as of the time of publication (the afternoon of November 14) the gubernatorial race in Arizona has not yet been called as of publication time.
In the Days Since November 8
Delays in finalizing election results are common and expected, as explored in past EIP Twitter threads. However, delayed results often open up space for misinformation assigning nefarious intent to the time delay to spread. In the days since November 8, online conversation around Arizona focuses on counting speed, making comparisons to Florida, with people questioning how Florida could count millions of ballots in a matter of hours while Arizona takes days. On November 10, Kari Lake drove much of the discourse around counting delays after conducting several interviews with conservative media outlets, including the Glenn Beck Show, the Charlie Kirk Show, Louder with Crowder, and NewsMax. In these, she alleged that the results coming out of Arizona were being intentionally ‘slow-walked,’ or deliberately not being counted. Initially Kari Lake was not saying that this ‘slow-walking’ was being done to actually steal the election from her, but instead that this was being done to dampen the movement of her political cause. This echoes the calls we previously documented about errors in election administration during the primary which were framed as intentional, and Kari Lake referenced the events of the primary as further evidence that slow-walking was deliberate. Later in the day her framing shifted, as exemplified in a NewsMax Instagram post (Figure 10), which received approximately 45,000 likes. Lake is quoted as stating “they are trying to delay the inevitable” in regard to the ballot counting delay and that she will unquestionably win the gubernatorial election.
Figure 10: A screenshot of a NewsMax Instagram post depicting a photo and quote by Kari Lake about her belief her election victory is inevitable.
Conclusion
Despite some disruptions caused by voting equipment issues, voters in Arizona were able to cast their votes on November 8. Our analysis of online conversations around technology issues highlights the complicated nature of sharing election information in real time. On a positive note, despite real issues with tabulators and printers on Election Day, Arizona election officials rapidly and clearly communicated the nature of the issues, the scope of the problem, and how they were solving it. Further, the bulk of Twitter conversation about the issue was based on mostly factual information about emerging issues and contained legitimate criticism of those issues However, this did not stop the emergence of misleading framing implying harmful intent or tying to broader or established conspiracy theories of election fraud. As anticipated, participatory “evidence” played a key role in substantiating both real and over exaggerated narratives of voting issues. Online audiences shared images and videos purported to be from Arizona showing the impact of voting equipment issues — namely pictures of poorly printed ballots and videos of election officials addressing lines of voters. Influential figures on Twitter amplified this evidence in both good faith and misleading ways, especially with regard to a sowing of distrust over Maricopa election officials' call for voters to place their votes in the secure “Box 3” in the case of tabulator issues. As we await the final results of Arizona’s races, particularly the contentious gubernatorial race, we anticipate the 17,000 votes placed in “Box 3” to be a prominent narrative.
Notes
[1] “The court makes several findings of fact and conclusions of law. As to the statute that applies to the operating hours during elections, the court finds that the Arizona legislature has determined there is a benefit [to] having a statutorily-mandated presumptive closing time of 7 pm. The court does not have any evidence to the contrary that there were 223 vote centers open and that no one who showed up between the hours of 6 am and 7 pm has been precluded from turning in a ballot, whether it’s an actual ballot or a provisional ballot. The declarations from the court’s perspective do show that although there might have been some confusion and some difficulties, that all the individuals in the declarations filed either a provisional ballot or a direct ballot vote. The court does not have any evidence that there was a voter who was precluded the right to vote, from what was presented. There was an opportunity and is an opportunity to 7 pm [for Maricopa County voters to place their ballots].”
Republican National Committee, et al. v. Stephen Richer, et al., No. CV2022-014827 (Maricopa Super. Ct. Nov. 8, 2022), https://www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/docket/CivilCourtCases/caseInfo.asp?caseNumber=CV2022-014827.