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lection judge Michele Swinick has come forward to report what she experienced in Maricopa County on Election Day. She worked Election Day as a judge at the Islamic Voting Center in Scottsdale, AZ. She reports that the center is heavily Republican, with “no party” designated voters as the second most populous demographic, followed by very few democrat voters, evidenced by the fact that she checked in very few of them on Election Day. She reports she spent the entire day checking in voters.
Swinick says that the tabulators all worked “perfectly” during the test the night before the election. The problem with scanning began immediately with the first ballots. Voters scanned their ballots between 4 and 12 times with very minimal success. Poll workers estimated about 1 in 10 ballots were being read for the first three hours of voting.
Voters were given options to either spoil their ballots and try again or drop them into a different section called “Door 3.” As per Swinick, their inspector had to empty the ballots from “Door 3” three times throughout the early afternoon because of the volume of ballots. Typically, ballots aren’t supposed to be removed from that box until polls close, but they made an exception because the box was jamming and became too full.
Swinick reports that the technician came to the center between 3:30 pm and 4:00 pm MT and rebooted the machines. After this, there were no further issues with ballots being run through tabulators. She reported that one of the poll workers told her, “Everything is now going smoothly with the tabulators.”
Per Swinick’s inspector, an offsite supervisor had advised “Because of the situation” to put all “door 3” ballots that had not been scanned through a tabulator into a separate black bag and to label them “misreads.” As a judge, Michele told UncoverDC that she personally signed the sticker placed over the bag’s zipper, and then these bags were sent to the tabulation center to be counted. Michele informed us that the normal process for a ballot that is “unread” is for poll workers to run the ballots through the tabulators one more time before sending them to the center. As per Swinick, this was not done.
The County had set up a website to give voters the ability to check that their vote was counted. The problem is Michele has proven that the website isn’t correct and seems to be using a voter’s “check in” as evidence their vote was tabulated rather than the actual tabulation of the vote. Michele offered her first-hand proof of this.
