Article: SUMMARY OF THE CASE
1. Qualified electors casting ballots in person on Election Day in Maricopa County submitted their completed ballot to an electronic tabulation machine. Numerous voters were alerted by these devices to a facial irregularity in their ballot—frequently an ostensible “overvote”—but were induced by poll workers to override the tabulator’s rejection of the ballot in the good faith belief that their vote would be duly registered and tabulated. In actuality, overriding the electronic tabulator’s alert automatically disqualifies the putative “overvotes” without additional review or adjudication.
Quick summary: some voters say (and some observers agree) that their in-person votes were rejected by the machine, and instead of being given an opportunity to review it, a poll-worker "pressed the green button" to accept the ballot, which meant that their vote in one or more of the things on the ballot, would have been marked as an "overvote".
Unofficial results actually list the number of overvotes.
https://recorder.maricopa.gov/media/Summary_110320.pdf
That's 4,816 overvotes. You'd normally get some overvotes anyway, as people make mistakes. But how many? How many were there in previous years?
Past Maricopa results can be found here:
https://recorder.maricopa.gov/electionresults/archivedelectionresults.aspx
2016 Presidential Election:
https://recorder.maricopa.gov/electionarchives/2016/11-08-2016 Final Summary Report NOV 2016.pdf
2020 had 8,209 undervotes, and 4,816 overvotes out of 2,052,756 votes. (overvote % =
2016 had 19,256 undervotes and 21,785 overvotes out of 1,608,875 votes! That's far more in 2020.
2012 had 6,648 undervotes, 3,229 overvotes out of 1,390,836 votes
2008 had 5,541 undervotes, 3,660 overvotes, out of 1,380,571 votes
2004 had 12,868 undervotes, 4,134 overvotes, out over 1,211,963
Arranging this as a table and calculating the percentage (as a percentage of votes cast)
Year | Undervotes | Overvotes | Votes cast | Under % | Over % |
2020 | 8209 | 4816 | 2052756 | 0.40% | 0.23% |
2016 | 19256 | 21785 | 1608875 | 1.20% | 1.35% |
2012 | 6648 | 3229 | 1390836 | 0.48% | 0.23% |
2008 | 5541 | 3660 | 1380571 | 0.40% | 0.27% |
2004 | 12868 | 4134 | 1211963 | 1.06% | 0.34% |
Conclusion: the amount of undervotes and overvotes is consistent with previous years when taken as a percentage of total votes cast. It's actually LOWER than three of the previous four years. So this is not consistent with the idea that more ballots were marked as overvotes this year and suggests the broader claim of the lawsuit is without merit.
In addition, if the poll workers WERE erroneously letting overvotes pass through, they would probably have applied randomly to both candidates. So fixing this problem would result in a slight improvement for Biden, as he won Maricopa County.
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