Global outage took down Pima County’s online ballot request, some Maricopa vote centers; state says no issues with main elections systems

A global tech outage has affected some election systems in Arizona as of noon Friday, but state and county officials say they are working swiftly to fix any issues and expect a quick recovery.

“We’ve been working all night with the Department of Homeland Security to minimize any sort of disruption,” said JP Martin, the deputy communications director for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office.

“We’re still monitoring the situation with our county partners and making sure they have the support they need,” he added.

Update on voting as of 6 p.m. July 19

In Pima County, elections officials kept voting centers open despite not being able to access the voter database to check-in voters. This allowed election officials at the centers to provide 18 voters access to provisional ballots, according to a Pima County Recorder’s Office post on X late Friday afternoon. Provisional ballots are a way to ensure “that voting early is safe and secure. Our staff researches each voter’s record to ensure they are eligible to vote prior to processing their ballots,” the post stated.

By just before 3 p.m. Friday in Maricopa County — where voters were not provided the option to cast a provisional ballot when many of the vote centers were closed earlier in the day — 39 out of the planned 41 voting centers were open, according to a Maricopa County Elections Department post on X .

An official at the Pima County Recorder’s Office said that while “most services are available,” some online systems are not working. July 19 is the last day to request a mail-in ballot and the online request form is not functioning. Alternatively, registered Pima County voters wanting a mail-in ballot can call 520-724-4330 by 5 p.m. July 19 and a mail-in ballot will be sent to them.

Although the Arizona deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Friday, voters can also ask for a ballot in-person and vote at a polling place now through July 26 and on Election Day, July 30. However, due to outages voters in Pima County who arrive at a voting center Friday to cast a ballot in person will be provided a provisional ballot.

The Pima County Recorder’s Office posted a statement on X with details of the changes and contingency plan: “Due to global internet outage, voting services are limited. Please note, provisional ballots will be issued until further notice.”

While state and county officials are working quickly to respond and make sure all voting systems are back online promptly, the global outage was sparked by a malfunctioning anti-virus software update and it’s uncertain how quickly all systems will be fully operating again. The outage has affected airlines, banks and many other businesses.

In Maricopa County, check-in systems at some vote centers weren’t working at the start of the day on Friday due to the global outage, Maricopa County Elections Department spokesperson Adrian Borunda said in an email to Arizona Luminaria.

“The vote center equipment is connected via a network to facilitate voter check in and cast their ballots,” Borunda said.

The department was working to swap out that equipment with standby equipment, Borunda said.

Meanwhile, 12 vote centers in Maricopa County were open as of 11:20 a.m. Friday. The department was working to get the remaining 29 centers that were also supposed to be open on Friday and operational throughout the day, according to Borunda.

Voters who show up to a closed vote center in Maricopa County can drop off early mail-in ballots. However, unlike in Pima County, voters cannot cast ballots at those locations, Borunda said. The department recommended that voters check its locations map to find vote centers open near them.

“We’d like to make it clear that we are implementing our contingency plans. There are now 12 vote centers operational where Maricopa County voters can cast their ballots and we are working on opening more throughout the day,” Borunda said. “We encourage everyone to use our website locations map to find those open centers. We appreciate voters’ patience while we work on responding to this global technology outage.”

Unlike Pima County, the department’s online system to request a mail-in ballot from Maricopa County was not affected by the outage, Borunda said. Anyone who hasn’t received a ballot or made a request can visit the elections department’s website to do so on Friday, the department posted on X.

The Arizona voter registration database was unaffected by the outage, Martin said Friday early afternoon. The tabulation systems are air-gapped, meaning they are not connected to the internet and were unaffected, he said.

“What they’re doing is best practice,” Martin said of the work of Pima and Maricopa counties.

“We have plans in place for events like this,” said Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly in a statement Friday. “Our well-organized team launched a coordinated effort that allowed voters to access our services with little disruption.”

The tech outage comes amid simmering distrust in the integrity of elections across the state and country. Some people took to social media Friday amid the contingency plans for voters to blast election officials in Arizona despite the outage being global.

Over the past several years, Arizona has been at the center of former President Donald Trump’s and his supporters’ efforts to discredit America’s election voting systems. In 2020, conservatives who complained of fraud and aimed to overturn legitimate election results pushed for an audit and hand-count of presidential election ballots.

Multiple audits, and even audits of the audit , have consistently shown that there was no concerted or widespread fraud in Arizona . Even staunch supporters of the Republican party have dismissed the specious claims of wrongdoing. Polling after the 2022 elections also found that a majority of Arizonans trusted the results.

Martin said he expects the only thing that will affect the integrity of this election is people who think that the systems were actually compromised.

“I think all of this will be rectified as quickly as possible,” he said. He added that at no point have votes been affected by the outage.

The post Global outage took down Pima County’s online ballot request, some Maricopa vote centers; state says no issues with main elections systems appeared first on AZ Luminaria .