PHOENIX — Many questions have been asked about Maricopa County’s Election Day printer issues that impacted 31% of vote centers.
The most important of which is if the problems were enough to impact the outcome of statewide races.
There is no denying that the issue, identified as a problem with the heat fusers in the ballot on-demand printers, resulted in long lines and major inconveniences to voters.
An analysis by ABC15 and the elections analytics company SplitTicket found that it is unlikely that the problems adversely impacted turnout in Maricopa County.
The analysis looked at historical midterm turnout figures in Arizona since 1990.
In the 2022 midterm, Maricopa County voters turned out at a rate of 64.2%.
This is a higher number when compared to the state, which had a turnout of 62.5%. This is not a given, in fact, it is the exception.
Maricopa had a higher turnout than the state in only three of the past nine midterms: 1990, 2006, and 2022.
In this past midterm, Maricopa County’s turnout was 1.7 points above Arizona as a whole, the largest difference since at least 1990.
Maricopa County makes up about 62% of the total votes cast in Arizona, largely influencing the state’s final turnout number.
When Maricopa County's turnout is compared to Arizona’s 14 other counties combined another pattern emerges.
In Presidential election years, the state’s largest county always outperforms the rest of the state in election turnout.
The opposite is true for midterm years. In 22 years, Maricopa had higher turnout than the rest of the state combined only twice: In 2006 and 2022.
Another way to look at midterm turnout is by voter retention from the last presidential election.
Lakshya Jain is a partner with SplitTicket and found that this year Maricopa retained more 2020 voters than the rest of the state. “The rest of Arizona saw a higher decline in turnout than Maricopa did in 2022,” Jain said.“
This is a break from the pattern that we saw in 2018, 2014, and 2010.
The data shows that in 2022, Maricopa County’s turnout was 16.3 points lower compared to 2020. The rest of Arizona’s counties shed 17.2 points. Every other midterm since 2002 has seen Maricopa’s turnout fall more than the other counties since the last presidential election.
There are claims on social media that due to Election Day issues hundreds of thousands of Maricopa County voters may have been disenfranchised.
The data immediately dispels this.
Midterm turnout in the county has averaged 57% since 2002. The county averages 77% in presidential years.
If hundreds of thousands more people voted last November, Maricopa’s turnout would likely have been over 76%, approaching presidential year turnout.
Something that is extremely unlikely.
What is also true is that turnout data cannot fully quantify if smaller numbers of people did not vote because of Election Day problems.
Even as many as a thousand voters would be difficult to detect in the turnout figures.
However, based on Election Day trends, no contest except maybe the Attorney General’s race which will head to recount with Democrat Kris Mayes leading Republican Abe Hamedeh by .002%, would have resulted in a different outcome even accounting for a smaller number of voters.
