PHOENIX — The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors certified the 2022 General Election results Monday.
Nearly 1.6 million voters cast a ballot in Maricopa County. That's 64.2% of the county's eligible voters, exceeding the historic average of 56.3% going back five decades.
However, not everyone believes the Supervisors should have certified the election.
This morning the line to get into the Board's meeting room started forming at sunrise.
"We don't trust the outcome of what happened, and we think it's really important the board of supervisors listens to us," said one woman who didn't want to be identified.
For nearly two hours, listening, is all the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors did.
Hearing from citizens about the good, "I'm here today to support your certification of the election results in our county," said Don Henninger from the AZ Democracy Network. And the bad, from people like poll worker Michele Arthur who said, "election day a few minutes after the first person comes up to get their scan, scan their ballots, misread, misread, misread, turn it over, misread and that's how it happened for the entire day."
There was a time when certifying election results was a formality, but not anymore.
More than 30 speakers would share examples of voting issues on Election Day.
In truth, ballot printers at more than 30% of the county's voting sites malfunctioned, leaving them unreadable by on-site tabulators.
County elections officials were on hand to answer claims that voters were being disenfranchised. But after nearly all of the people who showed up to register a complaint and speak didn't stay around to listen to the county officials' response.
"A lot of people who were here, if they chose to stay here after they asked a question or made their statement, could have heard an answer," said Supervisor Clint Hickman.
Supervisor Steve Gallardo, the lone Democrat on the board, accused the Kari Lake Campaign of trying to deny her voters an explanation for the problems on Election Day.
"You look at the Twitter feed of Kari Lake and the Kari Lake War Room, they put up 28 posts on Twitter of 28 people speaking with concerns and comments and yelling at us," Gallardo said, "but when it came time to answering every one of those questions not one tweet from Kari Lake explaining why there were problems at the polling place."
If you wanted to vote in Maricopa county, you could. And so, after everyone had their say, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to certify the election.
Now voters and candidates who want to challenge the results in court can if they choose to do so.
