Fact Check: Maricopa County Did NOT Lose Hundreds Of Thousands Of Voters Or Ballots On Election Day
Did Maricopa County, Arizona, lose some 292,000 votes in its final vote tally for the November 8, 2022, elections? No, that’s not true: The tweet making that claim left out voters who returned their mail-in ballots in person and people who cast provisional ballots.
The implied claim that Maricopa County had misrepresented the true number of voters who took part in the elections appeared in a tweet (archived here) on November 28, 2022. It opened:
BOMBSHELL REPORT: Maricopa County announced that on Election Day over 540,000 VOTERS visited one of the 223 vote anywhere centers in the county DESPITE releasing FINAL OFFICIAL RESULTS DATA claiming only 248,070 people voted…
This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of the writing:
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Wed Nov 30 18:25:38 2022 UTC)
There is a difference of 291,930 people between the two numbers cited in the tweet. That’s because the tweet does not provide the full information about voter participation on Election Day.
The Arizona county report that “over 540,000 voters” visited a voting center on Election Day included over 290,000 voters who returned their mail-in ballots in person and over 2,900 people who cast provisional ballots, Megan Gilbertson, the Maricopa County Elections Department spokesperson, told Lead Stories via email on November 30, 2022. That’s in addition to the reported 248,070 voters who went through the standard voting procedure in a voting center on Election Day.
The tweet included a screenshot of a November 27, 2022, Maricopa County Elections Department overview of its response to the elections. On page 1, the Department writes, “On Election Day, over 540,000 voters visited a site, which is more Election Day voters than all prior General Elections since 2008.”
Here is a screenshot of the document:
(Source: Maricopa County Elections Department screenshot taken on Wed Nov 30 19:08:18 2022 UTC)
The tweet also included part of a screenshot from Maricopa County’s “Final Official Results” from the election. The county did not break out separately in that document all the voters who voted at an election center.
A screenshot of these results can be seen below:
(Source: Maricopa County Elections Department screenshot taken on Wed Nov 30 19:09:33 2022 UTC)
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to Maricopa County during the 2022 elections can be found here.
This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Lead Stories can be found here.
