Dozens of vote-counting machines failed in Maricopa County, Arizona, triggering a spate of election fraud allegations across the right-wing media on Tuesday morning, a first sign that election skepticism and conspiracy theories will continue to emerge. on election day.
The state of Illinois also announced that it has been exposed to a cyber attack that will affect the voting mechanism in the midterm elections for Congress.
The state said: “The cyber attack we are exposed to is intended to destabilize democracy in America.”
In Arizona, Maricopa County officials said problems with ballot sorting machines, including refusal of valid ballots or not reading ballots, affected about 40 polling stations in county 223. .
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Bill Gates and County Chancellor Stephen Richer, both Republicans, said the problems were disappointing, but voters can still vote and the vote has not been turned down. “None of this indicates fraud, this is a glitch,” Gates said.
But allegations of widespread election fraud spread quickly on social media and right-wing media anyway, according to the New York Times.
Several right-wing influencers argued that problems with voting sites would disproportionately affect Republicans who generally preferred to vote in person due to the distrust of mail-order voting.
About six out of 10 Arizona voters reside in Maricopa County, which has been increasingly Democratic-oriented since 2016.
“It’s really a shame that there are these bad actors spreading lies that voting by mail isn’t safe,” said Taylor Moss, director of election protection at the Arizona Center.
A video recorded outside a polling station shows a poll official telling voters that one ballot reader is not working and another has misread about 25% of the ballots. The worker was seen telling voters that “no one is trying to deceive anyone”.
Another replied: “No, not on election day, no, it will never happen.” The person recording the video responds with a sarcastic tone.
The video, published by Tyler Boyer, chief operating officer of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth organization, has been viewed more than 1.7 million times on Twitter.
Republican Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Green shared the video on her official account and called for elections using “paper ballots only”.
Carrie Lake, the Republican candidate for governor who questioned the integrity of the election, posted the video on her Twitter account, adding, “That’s why we need to reform our elections.
During a live broadcast, Steve Bannon, a former aide to former President Donald Trump, suggested the flaw was a deliberate attempt to suppress the Republican vote on election day. “They’re doing it on purpose,” Bannon said.
And Ben Bergkam, one of the show’s guests, replied: “The only way to win is if they cheat.”
Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, has been the subject of conspiracy theories since the 2020 presidential election, when more than 150 Republicans raided a vote-counting site and claimed the county was committing fraud.
Maricopa election officials worked in subsequent years to allay concerns about electoral problems in the county, bypassing a painful early season that reignited conspiracy theories directed at officials and the election process.
“If you are in a polling station and you have problems, you have three options and your vote will count on each,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Mr. Gates posted on Twitter on Tuesday.
