It was a long day for the legal team representing Maricopa County in court on December 21, 2022.
The trial has started and if you watched any of the courtroom testimony, it was a bad day for team Hobbs.
Expert witness and cyber security consultant Clay Parikh testified that 42.5% of the ballots he examined were invalid.
Ballots in Maricopa County – early voting and election day ballots – are on 20-inch paper.
Parikh, was given permission by the court to examine a handful of ballots and found that 48 out of the 113 he looked at were printed out to just 19 inches. That means the machines can’t read the ballot and caused the craziness on election day.
From Tucson.com:
That is significant, Parikh said, because there would be no way for the tabulators, either at vote centers or at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center, to read and tally them.
“Is there any way, in your opinion, for a 19-inch ballot image to be projected onto a 20-inch ballot by accident?’’ asked Lake attorney Kurt Olson.
“No, sir,’’ Parikh responded. “The settings and the configurations and the procedures that are used cannot allow that,’’ he continued. “These are not a bump up against the printer and the settings change.’’
…
If a 19-inch printed ballot would not be read by tabulators, as with all unreadable ballots, just like any others with things like stray marks or tears, would be manually duplicated by election workers into a new ballot that could be scanned. Parikh confirmed he had seen only the original ballots, not the duplicates.
He hasn’t seen the duplicates because he hasn’t been allowed by the courts to examine him. Additionally, his purpose was to show that someone was responsible for the tabulator malfunction.
Here’s a highlight… #TonerGate#19inches
this hearing is turning out to be FASCINATING. pic.twitter.com/vPEaPbf43x
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) December 21, 2022
A Maricopa County official dismissed the error claiming that it’s a mute point because if a tabulator doesn’t read a vote, it is duplicated with a correct ballot.
The duplicate ballot issue will be further addressed during the trial; however, what Lake did show is someone messed with the printer settings.
All in all, it was not a good day for team Maricopa County.
Anybody who says today’s hearing is not an abject disaster for @katiehobbs is simply not watching the trial. @KariLake is doing better than anyone could have possibly imagined, even with the limited scope of her claims before the court. #19Inches #TonerGate pic.twitter.com/C94o9VDnUV
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) December 21, 2022
It’s not possible you watched today’s hearing and actually thought it went well for @katiehobbs. It was an abject disaster, @marceelias. And just in case you missed this highlight… https://t.co/hxmSxMxzrn pic.twitter.com/WMGJiYP1Yh
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) December 22, 2022
