Arizona gubernatorial candidate, lawmaker file motion to stop the use of voting machines

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) -- A gubernatorial candidate and a state lawmaker want the courts to stop Arizona from using electronic voting machines for the upcoming midterm elections. Kari Lake and Rep. Mark Finchem, both Republicans, announced they’re seeking a preliminary injunction for the state not to use “unsecure black box electronic voting machines” in November. The injunction joins a lawsuit that was filed in April calling on a jury trial, so using an electronic voting system to count ballots would be unconstitutional. The lawsuit names Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Pinal County Board of Supervisors as defendants.

In their injunction complaint, Finchem and Lake claim the machines are not “reliably secure” and don’t meet the “constitutional and statutory mandates to guarantee a free and fair election.” Finchem said in a statement that the machines are untrustworthy since companies refuse to open their systems and software to the public and, therefore, violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Lake and Finchem claim the devices have “glaring cybersecurity vulnerabilities,” including allowing for possible remote access, unmonitored network communications, and containing secret content. However, a report on the Arizona Senate’s partisan review of the 2020 election found zero evidence that voting tabulation machines were ever connected to the internet or that the information was compromised. It also found no significant problems in the election in Maricopa County.

He said it’s not a partisan issue, saying the “vulnerabilities and insecurity” of the voting tabulation machines had also been mentioned by Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen Amy Klobuchar, and former senator and current Vice President Kamala Harris. Opponents of using counting machines to count ballots have said election ballots should be counted by hand. Experts say that’s less accurate than the machines and would take a lot longer. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, the head of election operations for the county, estimated it would take 2.2 million hours to hand-count ballots in the 2022 midterm elections in Maricopa County. That translates into roughly 93 days, he said.