Officials in Arizona's electoral flashpoint of Maricopa County have found themselves unable to reconcile a discrepancy of almost 16,000 in outstanding ballot totals in the state's gubernatorial election, internal emails show.
The election was contested by Republican and former television anchor Kari Lake and Democrat and incumbent Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who has claimed victory despite concerns over the legitimacy of the electoral process.
In an email sent by Recorder Stephen Richer on November 10th to Elections Director Scott Jarrett, Richer expressed concern about the large discrepancy between the county's estimated remaining ballot totals and the number reported by the secretary of state's office.
"Unable to currently reconcile SOS listing with our estimates from yesterday," Richer wrote, showing that Maricopa County estimated 392,000 uncounted ballots, while the secretary of state's website said there were 407,664 ballots left. "So there's a 15,000 difference somewhere."
In another internal email forwarded to Jarrett by the chief of staff for Board of Supervisors Vice Chairman Clint Hickman, a poll worker complained at their vote center, the ballot tabulators worked 75% of the time, as approximately 400 of 1600 in-person votes were "misreads and put in slot 3."
"Ballots were put in the tabulator several times to get accepted," the worker reported. "Ballots were flipped, put in backward, flipped again before it might get accepted... Totally unacceptable."
On Thursday, a judge granted Kari Lake's request to inspect various ballots after she filed a lawsuit alleging that "hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots infected the election in Maricopa County," the majority of which were controversial mail-in ballots.
Last week, Katie Hobbs controversially certified her own victory as Secretary of State in a ceremony at the state Capitol. The move cleared the way for lawsuits and recounts in other races to begin.
