Maricopa County Says Some Voting Locations Affected by Global Tech Outage

A number of voting locations in Maricopa County, Arizona, were impacted by a worldwide outage Friday, officials said.

An election worker scans mail in ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 7, 2022. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A number of voting locations in Maricopa County, Arizona, were affected by the July 19 worldwide outage, officials said.

The Maricopa County Elections Department said in a statement published on its website that it is “experiencing an outage at some voting locations.”

“Please visit Locations.Maricopa.Vote for the most up-to-date information about locations that are open and their hours of operation,” the county also said.

The Pima County Recorder’s Office, which handles voting, also confirmed it’s dealing with the outage, but by the afternoon of July 19, it said services were “slowly coming back online.”

There has been “no impact to voters,” the office stressed.

Early voting for Arizona’s primary elections began on July 3 and is continuing for a number of races. The state’s primary election is July 30.

The winner of the Republican Senate primary will face Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who ran unopposed in his primary, to replace independent Kyrsten Sinema in the U.S. Senate. Republican candidates include former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Pinal County sheriff Mark Lamb, and scientist Elizabeth Reye, among others.

The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office didn’t respond by publication time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

“We’ve been working all night with the Department of Homeland Security to minimize any sort of disruption,” JP Martin, deputy communications director for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, told the Arizona Luminaria. “We’re still monitoring the situation with our county partners and making sure they have the support they need.”

Over the years, there have been allegations of fraud and irregularities in Maricopa County, the largest county in the state and home to Phoenix, including during the 2020 and 2022 elections. With 4.5 million residents, Maricopa County is the fourth-largest county in the United States by population.

The Phoenix Police Department’s 911 “computerized dispatch center” was affected, the department said in a post on X. “Our 911 center remains operational. If you need to call 911, stay on the line if you are put on a brief hold. City IT is working diligently to find a workaround until the outage has been restored,” it said.

The tech outage was confirmed by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike on July 19, saying that it wasn’t a cyberattack. The company also said that it primarily affected Microsoft Windows computers and systems, but not all of them. Apple and Linux computers and devices shouldn’t be affected, the firm said.

Aside from voting systems, governments, hospitals, airlines, courts, emergency services, and many more were affected by the outage. Thousands of flights around the world were either canceled or delayed, with several U.S. airlines issuing ground stops.

Several local TV stations in the United States were prevented from airing the news early on July 19, and some state and local governments reported problems at courts, motor vehicle departments, unemployment agencies, emergency call centers, and other offices. Affected hospitals had problems with appointment systems, forcing them to suspend patient visits and cancel some surgeries.

In an interview on NBC’s “Today Show,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologized, saying the company was “deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our companies.”

“We know what the issue is” and are working to fix it, he said. However, he noted it could take “some time” for customers needing a manual fix, which could be burdensome for businesses and government offices that don’t have adequate in-house expertise.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.