PHOENIX — Maricopa County has taken one of its ballot tabulators out of service for the rest of the 2026 election after its digital counter showed an error during a routine morning check, the county’s top two supervisors said in a joint statement emailed to media Thursday.
Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee and Vice Chair Debbie Lesko said Elections Department staff, followed by a bipartisan team of observers, were checking that each machine’s counter matched the number of ballots it had processed when one tabulator displayed the error message.
The ballots already counted on that machine will be re-run on a different tabulator, the supervisors said, with political observers present and livestream cameras rolling as usual.
“Issues arise in the course of administering every election, which is why our system in Maricopa County is built with transparency, safeguards and redundancies in place,” the statement said. “That system worked this morning.”
The county said it has informed both political parties and voters directly. The statement did not say how many ballots had gone through the affected machine. Early ballot counting is under way ahead of the Nov. 3 general election.
Sources: Maricopa County Board of Supervisors joint statement. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Secretlondon / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
