After counting on retail-grade printers to print a whole lot of hundreds of ballots on the spot after which experiencing a countywide Election Day breakdown, Maricopa County is planning on spending tens of millions to purchase a lot bigger, high-performance printers for every of its 2024 polling locations.

To switch its defective $300 OKI printers, Elections Director Scott Jarrett has chosen a brand new, $7,000 mannequin of Lexmark printer the county has beforehand used at some polling locations. It’s an costly alternative given the county’s measurement: With software program and provides, the grand complete involves $8.3 million.

County supervisors final week put aside $9 million to purchase the brand new Lexmarks when tentatively approving subsequent fiscal yr’s price range, which begins July 1. Apart from the price range approval, the county supervisors is not going to straight vote on the choice or the acquisition. It isn’t topic to a aggressive bidding or public course of as a result of the county has chosen to replace its current contract with its present tools provider, Runbeck Election Companies, as an alternative of approving a brand new one, in line with elections division spokesperson Matt Roberts.

Maricopa County Supervisor Chairman Invoice Gates mentioned county officers are taking a holistic have a look at 2022’s poll printer downside to make sure it doesn’t occur once more. 

“I’m assured we are going to make the appropriate resolution and there could have been the suitable period of time and examine put into it,” Gates mentioned.

Because the county invests in an try and keep away from future issues, election expertise specialists say that seeing such a big and complicated county expertise main technological issues on Election Day amplified the necessity for extra rules and oversight of printers and different ancillary election tools. 

Poll printers have been “seen as a peripheral factor,” mentioned Pam Smith, CEO of Verified Voting, a nonprofit which advocates for safety in election expertise. “However now there may be extra realization that this might really have an effect on voters.”

No federal or state legal guidelines regulate which printers Arizona counties use to print ballots-on-demand for voters, or how the printers are examined.

Requiring poll printers to be licensed in Arizona, as different election tools akin to poll tabulators are, would set requirements for the printers and the testing of printers that may assist forestall future issues, Smith mentioned. Verified Voting, in a information printed final month, beneficial that election officers arrange rigorous pre-election testing targeted on catching poll printing errors previous to the 2024 election.

“If that expertise goes to intersect with a voter in some unspecified time in the future, and it has the influence on their potential to successfully forged a poll … then it is best to most likely check it, proper?” Smith mentioned.

Genya Coulter, a senior election analyst for the election expertise and safety nonprofit OSET Institute, is advocating for federal tips for ballot-on-demand printers.

As of now, poll printers aren’t talked about within the U.S. Election Help Fee’s tips for voting techniques, which primarily contains the expertise used to forged a vote, akin to poll tabulators and their software program, poll marking units, and accessible voting machines. However the fee is finding out including different secondary tools to the rules. These are voluntary tips, however some states, together with Arizona, require voting techniques to fulfill them to be licensed by the state.

The nonprofit Heart for Web Safety has additionally taken discover of the dearth of requirements for testing this secondary class of election expertise — expertise aside from that used to forged, scan, or tabulate a poll, mentioned Jared Dearing, the group’s senior director of elections greatest practices. Beginning this fall, the group will supply a program to assist election officers consider the safety, accessibility, and value of voter registration techniques, voter check-in techniques, and election night time reporting techniques. The plan is so as to add ballot-on-demand printers throughout the subsequent two years, Dearing mentioned.

“Whereas non-voting techniques have historically been seen as secondary to voting tools, they’re tremendously essential to the profitable administration of any election,” Dearing mentioned. 

The shortage of rules meant Maricopa County’s election officers had no tips once they retrofitted the OKI printers in 2020. The county had beforehand used these retail-grade printers, akin to you may discover at an Workplace Depot, to print poll envelopes throughout early voting. When the county wanted extra printers, the OKIs have been repurposed to print ballots on Election Day.

These printers, although, weren’t geared up to print high-quality double-sided ballots on the thick and lengthy cardstock utilized in November 2022, and print high quality suffered, inflicting tabulators to reject ballots all through the day in one-third of polling locations. About 17,000 ballots that couldn’t be tabulated at polling locations have been finally in a position to be tabulated by bigger poll tabulators on the county’s central elections heart. 

Maricopa County examined its printers earlier than they have been used, and had efficiently used them within the 2020 election cycle and 2022 main, however an impartial assessment of what occurred discovered that higher testing, to simulate their heavy, intermittent use on Election Day, might have recognized that they’d fail when introduced with an extended and thicker poll in November. 

Final yr was solely the second federal election cycle that the large county, with 250,000 in-person Election Day voters, tried to print and tabulate ballots on the spot.

In 2020, the county switched to an all “vote heart” mannequin, the place voters can vote at any polling place as an alternative of simply the one of their precinct. That mannequin requires counties to have an digital voter check-in system and poll printers at polling locations to allow them to print on demand the right fashion of poll for every particular voter’s precinct. Even a voter from one neighborhood over may need totally different candidates on their poll than a voter who lives subsequent door to the polling place.

Maricopa County is without doubt one of the solely giant counties within the nation that does it this manner on Election Day, with most different giant counties in states with out all-mail elections both pre-printing ballots, tabulating them again at their central elections heart, or each, in line with a Votebeat evaluation of data from Verified Voting and the Nationwide Convention of State Legislatures.

This on-the-spot course of raises the stakes for expertise to work appropriately. It’s turning into extra frequent throughout the nation, as a rising variety of locations swap to a vote heart mannequin that’s supposed to be extra handy for voters, cheaper, and extra environment friendly for directors.

Which means the usage of ballot-on-demand techniques and digital voter check-in techniques, known as e-poll books, is rising, whereas principally remaining unregulated. 

California requires counties to certify their poll printers as a part of their elections system, however it’s unclear if some other states do. Including printers to the certification requirement would assist counties by offering an authorised tools record as a place to begin, Smith mentioned.

A number of California counties, of their requests for proposals for election tools, define particularly what the printer will want to have the ability to deal with. A 2019 Orange County RFP, for instance, requested corporations to explain how their printers would maintain up when utilized by greater than 2,000 voters a day for 10 days.

“That may require some stress testing,” Smith mentioned.

In Arizona, the Elections Procedures Handbook, which has the drive of legislation, requires counties that use ballot-on-demand printers to incorporate ballots printed by the printers within the pre-election logic and accuracy check carried out by the secretary of state’s workplace, and requires normal testing of the printers earlier than every election, however the guide doesn’t supply specifics. The remaining is as much as the county.

Maricopa County isn’t the one place having poll printing issues. A assessment by the OSET Institute this yr, spurred by Maricopa County’s issues, found80 situations of poll printing errors throughout the nation between 2020 and 2022, in line with Coulter, who introduced her findings at an election safety convention earlier this yr.

Coulter mentioned that including printers to the record of kit that must be licensed in every state ensures not solely that the printer will work however that will probably be protected from any potential tampering.

In Maricopa County, every Lexmark printer will include software program and provides, with the package deal for every totaling $13,000. The county already has 165 Lexmark printers and can want 640 extra, sufficient to have two or three at every of the about 250 polling locations deliberate for 2024, Jarrett mentioned. 

If the county wasn’t updating its Runbeck contract, a purchase order of this measurement would usually undergo a public procurement course of, required within the county for any buy over $100,000.

The unique Runbeck contract didn’t exit to bid in Maricopa County, both, as a result of the county adopted a Pinal County contract after which modified it to fulfill its wants, Roberts mentioned.

Even when the county did exit to bid for the printers, Runbeck CEO Jeff Ellington mentioned he doesn’t consider there can be many corporations aggressive with Runbeck, given its location in Phoenix and measurement.

There aren’t many choices for poll printers, typically, Ellington mentioned, however particularly when ballots are double-sided and as lengthy and thick as Maricopa County’s ballots, at 20 inches and 100-pound weight in November. 

In 2024, the county may want a fair longer, 22-inch poll, given the anticipated variety of contests, in line with Jarrett, the county’s election director.

Hardly any printers can precisely print on each sizes of ballots as much as 22 inches lengthy, Ellington mentioned. Printing ballots requires a precision not wanted for different paperwork, as a result of the poll picture needs to be completely aligned on the paper and the toner needs to be darkish sufficient for the tabulator to simply accept them, Ellington mentioned

In a laser printer just like the OKIs the county was utilizing, the printer must warmth up the web page sufficient for toner — powder that adheres to the paper to create the picture — to stay correctly, and to be darkish. In November, the ballots didn’t get scorching sufficient and the toner was too gentle for the tabulators.

Runbeck does complete testing on new printers, printing hundreds of ballots on totally different paper varieties, earlier than it even provides them to prospects. Runbeck did this for the OKIs that Maricopa County was utilizing, and for the brand new Lexmarks, Ellington mentioned.

Maricopa County has additionally simply accomplished its personal testing of the Lexmark, after borrowing one from Runbeck.

Ellington mentioned he thinks the county is making the appropriate alternative in upgrading to the Lexmarks, particularly given the turnout and lengthy poll anticipated in 2024.

“Subsequent yr has bought to go actually easily,” he mentioned.

Votebeat is a nonprofit information group reporting on voting entry and election administration throughout the U.S. Join their free newsletters right here.