Arizona Judge Denies GOP Request to Block Use of Maricopa’s Voting Equipment - Democracy Docket

Nov 07, 2024

By Rachel Selzer

November 5, 2024

An Arizona judge denied the Maricopa County Republican Committee’s (MCRC) request to prohibit the county from using electronic voting systems that allegedly failed to comply with certain password protections.

In an order issued this morning, the judge said it would be inappropriate to grant the request and disrupt the counting and reporting of votes with the election already underway. The ruling further highlighted the fact that as of Nov. 2, Maricopa County has already tabulated roughly 895,000 ballots using the challenged voting equipment.

MCRC alleged in an Oct. 29 complaint that Maricopa County is unlawfully using passwords for its voting machines and tabulating equipment that were provided by its vendor Dominion Voting Systems. According to the lawsuit, Arizona law stipulates that passwords for voting systems should not be vendor-supplied and must only be known by authorized users.

MCRC not only sought to cast doubt on the security of the county’s equipment, but also the integrity of its elections more broadly. In particular, the suit argued the county is “enabling and allowing potential unauthorized access to the County’s voting systems that could result in manipulation of election results without likely detection.”

MCRC also raised the specter of unauthorized users potentially hacking into the county’s voting systems in order to “unencrypt tabulator passwords…as well as alter, fabricate, and transmit fraudulent election results, without likely detection.”

“The consequences of such manipulation and their impact on the democratic process are terrifying to contemplate,” the complaint stated.

Over the past few years, far-right groups and MAGA-aligned candidates have attempted to spread conspiracy theories and sow uncertainty in the security and integrity of Arizona’s elections, particularly in the battleground county of Maricopa. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a previously dismissed lawsuit over Maricopa’s voting machines brought by Kari Lake, a known election denier and current GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona.

Read the order here.

Learn more about the case here.

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