Arizona's election officials had two years to fix the problems causing a printer malfunction that delayed voting at about 60 polling places in Maricopa County on Tuesday but didn't, which is "inexcusable," Rep. Andy Biggs told Newsmax on Thursday.
"This is the exact same issue that we had just two years ago," the Arizona Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "It took them eight hours to figure out that their printer settings were wrong. You need new personnel at the top there."
Elections officials said all votes would be counted, but Biggs said there is no way to know how many people were "disenfranchised by this epic failure on the part of our election officials in Maricopa County," as many people would not or could not wait for the eight hours it took to fix the printer issues.
Democrat gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, whose race with GOP nominee Kari Lake remains too close to call, is also Arizona's secretary of state, which puts her in charge of being sure votes get counted. Biggs called it "inexcusable" that she hasn't recused herself, even if state law doesn't require it.
"For her to say that she didn't think there was a conflict of interest shows that there is a moral gap in her perspective on conflicts and ethics," said Biggs.
The printing malfunction, he added, "happened under her watch and under the watch of the Maricopa County recorder."
Meanwhile, Biggs said he believes that with the votes remaining to be counted, Lake will win.
"Last night, there were about 600,000 votes left to be counted, believe it or not, and I don't even know if that counted provisional ballots," said Biggs. "The vast majority, almost 500,000 of them, just a little under 500,000, were in Maricopa County, though the rest of the state Kari's going to win, probably … she will win Maricopa County 2 to 1 and she should win by a significant margin."
Biggs also said he thinks GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters will beat incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly.
Biggs said that if Republicans retake the House as expected, they will craft a rules package to "restore democratization and decentralization of power" and then will vote on electing leaders, but will have to act fast on agenda items.
"We have only about eight months to get our agenda up and running because then you move into the election cycle, and it's a real fast election cycle, for the presidency of 2024," Biggs said. "That will suck the oxygen out of this place."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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