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The county uses a process, outlined in a guide given to lead poll workers, to check a voter out of the system if they want to leave a location after getting a ballot, but before voting.

After widespread printer problems in Maricopa County on Election Day, the ballots of 146 county voters - from voters who checked in at an initial vote center and received a ballot but left, potentially without casting that ballot - are in limbo, and potentially will not be counted. Read more»

Politifact Truth-O-Meter: False

Nationally and in Arizona, Republicans - including Mark Finchem - have criticized the vote count rate in Maricopa County, but although roughly 62,000 ballots were added to the total amount of votes at around 7 p.m. that evening, more than 1.13 million ballots had already been counted. Read more»

Voters wait in line at a Mesa polling location on Nov. 8, 2022.

Republicans Kari Lake and Blake Masters, along with the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, filed a lawsuit late Tuesday against Maricopa County demanding that polling places remain open until 10 p.m. on Election Day. Read more»

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer questions election officials during a Jan. 5, 2022, hearing at the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Maricopa County Elections Department officials were responding to claims about the 2020 General Election made by Senate contractors Cyber Ninjas, Cyfir, and EchoMail.

A Missouri man was indicted Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Justice for threatening to kill Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer because he opposed the Arizona Senate’s partisan election review. Read more»

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer questions election officials during a Jan. 5, 2022, hearing at the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Maricopa County Elections Department officials were responding to claims about the 2020 General Election made by Senate contractors Cyber Ninjas, Cyfir, and EchoMail.

In a scathing letter, Maricopa County officials laid into Attorney General Mark Brnovich for issuing a report last month that was "full of false innuendo and misrepresentations" about the 2020 election. Read more»

Nail-biter elections that last two weeks after the polls close could be a thing of the past under a proposed measure that could be on the November ballot — with the trade-off that Arizonans will have fewer options for casting their votes. Read more» 1

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said during an online forum on election reform sponsored by States United Democracy Center that officials need to work to restore voters’ trust in the system.

While bipartisan panel of election officials preferred to look forward to the 2022 general elections, other voting rights advocates said officials cannot afford to ignore the ongoing threat posed by election deniers. Read more»

A house in Goodyear that activist Liz Harris claims is a vacant lot from which two ballots were cast by mail in the 2020 general election. The house is clearly visible from the street.

The leader of an activist group that issued a report on election irregularities provided an explanation why she falsely claimed ballots were cast from a vacant lot: She meant to attribute those votes to an address that doesn’t actually exist and where she knew no ballots were cast. Read more»

Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas has been ordered to make public all documentation regarding its audit of Maricopa County’s Nov. 3 presidential ballots.

The mistrust in Arizona’s Nov. 3 presidential election and the months-long "audit" it spawned is quickly spreading across the country, with politically driven efforts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Texas, the executive director of Secure Democracy said Wednesday. Read more»

Rep. Reginald Bolding Jr., D-Phoenix, was in Washington as part of a voting rights rally Tuesday outside the White House. The event took place the same day that the U.S. House passed a bill that would make it harder for states to make election law changes without federal oversight.

Arizona Senate Republicans are expected to begin their review Wednesday of a partial Maricopa County election 'audit', but critics are not waiting until then to target the report as little more than “invalid and unreliable” partisan propaganda. Read more»

Rep. Reginald Bolding, D-Phoenix.

Arizona House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding is running for Arizona secretary of state, setting up a Democratic primary battle against former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes. Read more»

Sen. Sonny Borrelli at the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix, Arizona.

A top-ranking Senate Republican told a Pinal County woman who claims to have found shredded 2020 ballots in a trash bin that she should turn them over to him and warned against trusting the Republican attorney general with the “smoking gun” evidence of election fraud. Read more» 1

Misinformation and conspiracy theories such as 'Sharpiegate' spread like wildfire due in part to a viral video from Marko Trickovic, who is part of a fringe political movement to create a new political party, the so-called Patriot Party of Arizona.

A bill at the Arizona legislature aims to prevent counties from requiring that specific markers or any other pen be used that may damage a ballot after a debunked claim that they spoiled ballots during the November election spread across social media during the election. Read more»

Then-candidate Donald Trump speaking at the Phoenix Convention Center in September 2016.

Prior to the violence that disrupted Congress’ counting of the electoral votes, President Donald Trump gave an indignant speech filled with falsehoods about the presidential election he lost two months ago to Democrat Joe Biden. Read more»

Election workers process ballots over the weekend in Maricopa County where webcams, like the one that captured this image, stream events live. President Donald Trump, trailing in Arizona, sued over the handling of several hundred ballots in Maricopa County, but his case got a chilly reception Thursday in Superior Court.

Roopali Desai, the attorney for the secretary of state, said the suit does not seem to be concerned with overvotes as much as it aims to “undermine the integrity and credibility of the election.” Read more»

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