Pinal County, Arizona, one of the state’s largest counties, experienced major issues at polling sites on Tuesday.

By 5 p.m., the county ran out of in-person ballots due to “unprecedented demand.” Polling site workers had to begin printing out additional ballots to send out to the sites that ran out.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, due to a printing error, some voters had to fill out two ballots because some ballots did not include the municipal races. Voters were forced to fill out a separate municipal-only ballot, as well as the ballot for the state, federal legislative, and county races.

Issues were reported with the “two ballot” system, with some reporting that they were not given the municipal ballot at all. Others claimed that it was the Republican ballots they were out of, although this has not been confirmed by county officials.

GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel and Republican Party of Arizona Chair Kelli Ward issued a scathing joint statement on the election system’s failures within their state, calling for the resignation of the Pinal County Elections Director:

“During Arizona’s primary elections, the RNC and Republican Party of Arizona’s poll observer program documented and reported multiple failures by Pinal County’s Elections Administrator, including 63,000 mail-in ballots delivered to the wrong voters and multiple Republican-heavy precinct locations running out of ballots. This is a comprehensive failure that disenfranchised Arizonans and exemplifies why Republican-led efforts for transparency at the ballot box are so important. Pinal County Elections Director David Frisk should resign immediately.”

https://twitter.com/bennpetersen/status/1554672205472022529?s=20

Arizona Senator Kelly Townsend also voiced her disapproval of the voting issues in Pinal County, making it clear that these errors are completely unacceptable.

“I am aware of the issue of the lack of ballots in Pinal County. I have been in communication with County officials and I am demanding a solution and possible injunction. I will update as soon as I know more but this is wholly and completely unacceptable!”

In Maricopa County, another one of Arizona’s largest counties, multiple poll workers claimed that the ink from government-issued pens was smearing on the ballots and making them more difficult to correctly run through the machines.

One poll worker reported, “We’ve had several ballots come through with the markers that got smeared in the machine. Probably 10-15% right now. We got them all except one to work by spinning them around and trying different angles, some take 3-4 tries.”

Election results in Arizona are slowly coming in despite the major voting issues that took place.

Trump-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters has secured a victory in the Republican Senate primary, and Trump-endorsed Mark Finchem won the GOP Secretary of State race. David Farnsworth, yet another Trump-backed candidate, clinched his Senate primary win against never-Trumper Russell Bowers.

Trump-backed Senate candidate Blake Masters

Meanwhile, all eyes are on the race for the GOP Arizona governor candidate.

The Trump-endorsed candidate for governor, Kari Lake, at the time of this article’s publication, is holding a small lead over opponent Karrin Taylor Robson, who is endorsed by Mike Pence, with about 80% of the vote counted.

The race is still too close to call.

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