EMERALD ROBINSON: Did Maricopa County Violate The Law?

via Emerald Robinson’s Substack

Here’s a short update from Kevin Moncla and David Cross over at Election Oversight on a potential violation of the law by Maricopa County election officials in their handling of “defective” ballots:

In Maricopa County on Election Day, voters printed their ballots, filled them out, and attempted to scan their ballots, but a large number were rejected by the scanner — usually several times.  

County officials then instructed poll managers to have voters put their rejected ballots that wouldn’t scan in compartment #3.

County officials later picked up the compartment #3 (rejected) ballots, and took them to the county office where they were scanned by a central scanner.

The county’s actions were not lawful.

Arizona law states:

SB1135 clearly states that a ballot that “…cannot properly be counted by the automatic tabulating equipment” is “defective.” The ballots that were placed in compartment 3 were rendered “defective” when they could not be read by the tabulator. Therefore, according to AZ law, those ballots should have been duplicated accordingly — not brought to another location and scanned.  

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