By Matthew Holloway |
On Tuesday, Maricopa County Elections officials held a press conference on the expectations voters can have over the next weeks as primary votes are cast and tabulated in the July 30th election. The performance of the Arizona election system will likely presage the General Election experience we can expect in November. Amidst the CrowdStrike outage and the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump looming over the proceedings the officials took questions from several outlets and briefed the press on projected turnout.
Maricopa County District 3 Supervisor Bill Gates began by addressing the increasingly tense atmosphere to the gathered reporters saying, “Unfortunately we’re talking about and thinking about political violence and our country right now in a way that we haven’t in a long time.”
He continued citing security concerns on election day, “We know that’s on people’s minds and that’s why we are committed to providing a safe and secure experience both for our elections workers as well as those people who go to vote .”
Gates added, “It’s very important that everybody understands that me and my colleagues on the board are committed to safe, secure and transparent elections.”
Responding to questions about the impact of CrowdStrike’s Friday outage on the election system, Fields Moseley, the Maricopa County Communications Director, told 12News, “We feel like we had a fairly low impact. Still, almost 400 people voted on Friday. We opened at 9 a.m. with four vote centers open and had a rolling opening all day long as those were fixed and 40 were opened before the end of the day. None of the tabulators were affected by this. They’re on an air-gap system. They’re not connected to the internet.”
The Republican National Committee and Republican Party of Arizona sent a joint letter to the Maricopa County Elections Director expressing their concerns following the disruption.
“The most recent occurrence is extremely worrisome due to the online nature of the issue and the implications if this were to happen on Election Day,” the state and national GOP said in part.
AZGOP Chair Gina Swoboda said in a statement accompanying the letter:
“Following the discovery that the global CrowdStrike outage had affected elections systems in Maricopa and Pima counties in Arizona, the RNC, AZGOP, and Trump Campaign’s election integrity department have sent a letter to every county in the state. We are demanding information on any other systems affected, if vulnerabilities were exploited, and full evidence demonstrating that there were no breaches to determine the extent of the issue. Most importantly, we must have complete assurance that this will not happen again and that the elections systems are not susceptible to these threats during our country’s most important election. These breaches highlight alarming fragilities in the voting system, and we need confirmation that there was no nefarious activity. How was this allowed to happen in a critical battleground state during the primary election?
Voters must have full confidence their ballots are protected. We will uncover the evidence and pursue every avenue needed to ensure the system is secure.”
Moseley replied, “We’re aware of the letter from the RNC. We will respond to the RNC at the appropriate time.” He continued, “We already publicly explained what happened to our ballot on demand system on Friday during the day. We opened at 9:00 a.m. with four vote centers open and had a rolling opening all day long as those were fixed and 40 were open before the end of the day. None of the tabulators were affected by this. They’re on an air gap system. They’re not connected to the internet.”
Addressing concerns for the General Election, Jennifer Liewer, the Maricopa County Deputy Elections Director for Communications told the conference, “We will have over 240 vote centers open, so if a vote center does go down, people are able to choose from a different vote center, but we will have increased resources, increased technology personnel.” She added, “We are prepared should something occur on Election Day to be able to be responsive without knowing that what exactly might happen and obviously you can um do the best you can to plan for things. And I think our staff being flexible responsive.”
She continued, “Our IT staff were up in the middle of the night on site at MCTEC helping get computers rebooted. It was really all hands on deck and Maricopa County voters can know that we are dedicated and even if that means getting up in the middle of the night and coming into work, we’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that everybody who wants to cast a vote has the ability to do so.”
Moseley, describing the impact of the CrowdStrike outage, noted, “Friday was a pretty unique event,” even quipping: “I mean let’s ask Delta Airlines.” Responding to a question on converting to a different system he told reporters, that he couldn’t say for sure if the county is “re-evaluating,” its use of CrowdStrike for cyber security or Microsoft’s products, which he referred to as “ubiquitous.”
The officials noted that the county is anticipating 623,000 ballots to be cast in total by mail, dropbox, or in-person for the primary election with approximately 94,000 of those being in-person on election day. Approximate projections for total turnout are from 718,000-894,000 or about 30% of the electorate.
Assistant County Manager Zach Schira stressed the staffing levels and heavy investment the county has made in elections stating, “Good people ran lawful elections in Maricopa County in 2020 and 2022 and are doing so in 2024. Our full-time election staff, supplemented by thousands of members of this community, are trained to ensure we are following the law.” He added, “Over the past year, the Board of Supervisors has invested heavily in elections: more than $15 million in new money towards resources and equipment that directly impact the efficiency and security of our operations. Bottom line: we are well resourced, well planned, well trained for next Tuesday’s Primary and the entire 2024 cycle.”
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
