Election Day Sabotage of the Ballot Printers
Maricopa County, Arizona General Election on Nov 8, 2022
“Why do you think this was intentional, sabotage?”
It’s Simple. There were widespread printer failures at many different vote centers, which is the main indicator of sabotage. Throughout Maricopa County, hundreds of ballot printers were connected to hundreds of independent, Dell laptop PCs and not to a central print server. If a central print server had a problem, it would have a widespread effect on many printers, but this is NOT the case.
This leaves the printer settings on hundreds of individual laptops are distributed to 223 different vote center locations around Maricopa County. These printer settings are the focus on how the election day sabotage occurred, because the printing issues caused the ballot tabulators to reject the voter’s ballots! Let’s learn about it…
Below are two examples of Maricopa County Ballot Printers connected to Dell Windows 10 laptops. There were over 400 of these laptop/printer combinations deployed throughout Maricopa County on election day, with two different printer manufacturers, Lexmark and OKI.
So, Prove The Claim of “Widespread Failures”
On the graph below, each circle represents a Dominion tabulator that scans a printed ballot. Based on the tabulator system logs, the number of ballot rejections can be determined for each vote center tabulator. System log example:
You can see WIDESPREAD ballot rejection rates throughout the county’s vote centers and many locations rejected 50% or more of the ballot inserts (red box). This is proof of the WIDESPREAD claim! Now, we’ll look at the main cause of the ballot rejections.
This is an example of the Dominion tabulators rejecting the Maricopa County ballot from the Victory Lutheran vote center in Mesa, AZ.
Understanding the Two Major Printing Issues
We will start by focusing on a single vote center, because the court evidence leads us to this exact location. Gateway Fellowship vote center is highlighted below with both tabulators rejecting about 72% of the ballot inserts.
First, it is important to know that two major printing problems occurred on election day. One of the problems is the “faded image” issue that caused the timing boxes to not fill in completely black. If anything is wrong with these timing boxes, the tabulator will reject the ballot. Here is an example of the “fading image” issue causing the speckled timing boxes printed on the ballot.
Another major printing problem is when the ballot image size is wrong. For the Maricopa County election, this is known by several different names. The concept is that the ballot image is scaled or resized, which is an “image scale” issue. This issue is called the “shrink to fit” problem or “fit to page” problem or “fit to paper” and creates a smaller ballot image, roughly 19 inches, printed on the 20 inch paper.
Even though the ballot timing boxes are perfectly blackened, this smaller image prints the timing boxes in the wrong places. The tabulator will reject this ballot 100% of the time.
On the left is the smaller, rescaled ballot image on 20 inch paper and on the right is the proper ballot image on the same 20 inch paper.
Realize that both of these issues are well documented in the Dominion Democracy Suite manual for ballot printing specifications. These exact issues would be visually inspected as part of a test-print, quality assurance process.
The left side shows the Dominion Democracy Suite documentation detailing both the ballot “image scale” issue and the ballot “faded image” issue.
Now, back to the Gateway Fellowship vote center and the court evidence revealing a particular printer setting.
As part of the Kari Lake election lawsuit trial, the group text messages for field technicians (Exhibit C, p17) was submitted to the court. At 4:02PM, a printer setting called “Use full printable area” was discovered by a technician at the Gateway Fellowship vote center. Enabling this simple setting allowed the tabulators to accept ballots at that vote center.
This setting may not seem like much, but let’s show a few more of this technician’s group texts to reveal that the Gateway Fellowship vote center was basically down most of the day (remember 72% rejection rate on both tabulators)! Also remember, the “image scale” issue will reject 100% of the time, whereas the “faded image” issue may be more intermittent, depending on how faded the “timing boxes” are.
The “Use full printable area” printer setting issue is the “sabotage setting” because it is difficult to reconcile how that would be an accidental change at multiple sites. As the number of vote centers affected by the “small ballot image” issue goes up, the likelihood of “accidental setting change” goes down fast… really fast! This is key!
BOTH Tabulators are down in the morning:
For a better technical understanding, the picture below shows the Lexmark printer driver shrinking the print image size by 4%, when a combination of “Use full printable area” unchecked and “fit to paper” setting is selected in the printer settings.
A question can be asked, “If the Lexmark printers were working when the vote center opened at 6AM, how could these settings get changed a few hours later?” Sure, an accident by a technician working on the Dell laptop is not out of the question, but if there are multiple sites have this same “image rescale” issue occurring at roughly the same time, then the technician accident theory does not hold up. So, let’s keep an eye on this “sabotage setting.”
Test Prints Should Catch These Issues!
These laptops and printers were tested the night before the election. Ballot printing was a WIDESPREAD issue at many vote centers, but realize there was also widespread ballot print testing prior to election morning!
This is an example of a sworn affidavit from a poll worker that verifies test prints were made the night before the election, and it also verifies tabulator rejections at the vote center opening 6AM.
So what changed overnight? What caused the printers to print “faded image” ballots when the vote centers opened at 6AM? What caused the printers to print “image scaled” ballots?
If the printer settings were changed between the evening PRINT TEST and the vote center open, this CHANGE information should be on the Dell laptop, in the Windows Event Logs. We don’t have access to that information! If we did, then it would probably be the end of the discussion.
So, now we must gather more evidence from the court testimony to see how widespread the “sabotage setting” really is! Here, we run into some drama.
Maricopa County Court Testimony - Lies and Contradictions
Yes, Maricopa County Elections Day Director Scott Jarrett lied in court. He lied about this exact issue, i.e. the invalid, “image scale”, small ballot image. Why?
About the 19 inch ballot image (image scale issue) on 20 inch paper:
Scott Jarrett says on Day 1: “If something like that happened, WHICH I DON’T KNOW HOW IT WOULD…”
Scott Jarrett says on Day 2: “I don’t know the exact measurements of a “fit to paper” printing. I just know it creates a slightly “smaller image” of a 20” inch image…”
You can listen to Day 1 and Day 2 testimony here:
After Scott Jarrett’s Day 1 denial of knowing about the “image scale” issue, you can see Scott consulting with his lawyer prior to the change in testimony for Day 2.
The Second Lie
Here is Scott’s second lie regarding the ballot image scale issue. He testified that there were only 3 vote center locations affected by the 19” ballot image.
(Journey Church, Gateway Fellowship Church, and Lakeshore LDS Church).
This contradicts the testimony of the Computer Security Analyst expert witness, Clay Parikh. The day before the court hearing, he was able to audit misread ballots from six different vote centers. All SIX sites had “image rescale” ballot issues.
In addition, this sworn affidavit from an election observer at MCTEC (central tabulation center) was able to get a location list of some of the misread ballot bags. She noted that Victory Lutheran Church was on Scott Jarrett’s list of vote centers with a “Shrink to Fit” (image scale) issue! Scott Jarrett never mentioned Victory Lutheran or Chandler Bible as vote centers with “image scale” issues. Why would he lie again?
Even though Scott Jarrett denied knowing how a smaller ballot image could be printed on 20 inch paper during Day 1 testimony, his Day 2 testimony confirms knowing about the list above, and its creation a “a few days after” the November 8 election.
Victory Lutheran Image Scale Issues
We can prove that Victory Lutheran Church was a vote center with the “image scale” issue. The video of tabulators rejecting the ballot at the beginning of the article is from that site! Compare the margins from ballot image in this video and you will see the Victory Lutheran ballot image is scaled down.
We know this video is from the Victory Lutheran vote center because of the Maricopa County tag on the side of the tabulator machine - BT0241:
We have a poll observer’s sworn affidavit that just so happened to write down the tabulator number BT0241! Lucky!
Her story gives a MAJOR clue as to when the “image scale” issue started to occur at this vote center.
At Victory Lutheran, the problem started to occur around 9:20 AM and then both tabulators were down by 10:40 AM.
At Gateway Fellowship, both tabulators were down at 10:30 AM.
The odds of BOTH sites having the “image scale” issue in the same timeframe is low. Gateway Fellowship had a technician onsite and Victory Lutheran did not! At this point, Scott Jarrett testified that the technicians made a mistake of changing settings that rescaled the image on the ballots, but the data above does not agree with Scott’s testimony.
Why would these “image scale” issues suddenly occur on the Lexmark printers? Why would Scott Jarrett lie again at the Board of Supervisors meeting by saying there were no Lexmark issues? Gateway Fellowship and Victory Lutheran both had Lexmark printers and were down MOST of the day!
What is Scott trying to hide about the “image scale” Lexmark issue? Why is he just blaming the OKI printer heat setting for the election day print issue?
Here is Scott testifying that they had never told the public about the “image scale” printing issue. Seriously, what is he hiding?
Let’s summarize the “image scale” issue lies.
Dec 21 - Day 1 Testimony: “If something like that happened, WHICH I DON’T KNOW HOW IT WOULD…”
Dec 22 - Day 2 Testimony: “Fit to Paper (image scale) issues occurred at only 3 sites.”
Dec 22 - Day 2 Testimony: Not disclosing Victory Lutheran Church or Chandler Bible as known fit to paper (image scale) site, as per his own Nov 14 list.
Dec 22 - Day 2 Testimony: Root Cause Analysis still in process, as the reason for withholding the “image scale” issue until Day 2 Testimony.
Nov 28 - Supervisor Meeting: “It’s not identifying we had any issues with the Lexmark”, but his Nov 14 list shows Victory Lutheran Church with the “image scale” issue.
Let’s keep digging into the details…
Paper Jam errors, but with no Paper Jam
It was noticed that the Dominion tabulators would sometimes show a paper jam error, but there was no actual paper jam. These errors started to show up a couple hours after the vote centers opened, and below is an example of a Lexmark vote center that reported the paper jams.
A Dominion tabulator misread will reject the ballot, but does not require manual intervention. The paper jams do require manual intervention. But why would a paper jam error be important?
The tabulator paper jam errors with NO PAPER physically jammed are an indicator of the “image scale” issue occurring. Clay Parikh explains the extra margin border can cause the tabulator’s software believe their is a paper jam.
An analysis of the Dominion system log files helped determine what time these paper jam errors started to occur. Based on these log files, it shows the paper jam issues began close to 8:00 AM on election day.
There are also messages from the technician group texts that indicate the paper jam errors but “no jam” was found. This text message was from 8:46 AM and indicates the problem was still occurring at the same site at 5:00 PM.
But look at the printer type for this technicians location. They are OKI printers! It looks like the OKI printers were also printing ballots with the “image scale” issue.
This is another confirmation that OKI printer had the “image rescale” issue. This 19” ballot comparison photo was taken from ballots printed at the Journey Church vote center. The was one of the 3 vote centers named by Scott Jarrett as have the “fit to paper” image scale issue.
The data is telling us that the “image scale” printer settings occurred about 2 hours AFTER the vote centers opened, and these settings were changed on BOTH Lexmark and OKI printers.
So Let’s Review - Ballot Printing Issue Main Points
The ballot printing problems were WIDESPREAD throughout Maricopa County’s individual laptop/printer combinations.
The “image scale” issue was known by Maricopa County prior to the Day 2, December 22 court testimony, but they never discussed it in the public press releases or meetings!
The “image scale” issue occurred on both Lexmark and OKI printers.
The “image scale” issue seems to have started around 2 hours AFTER the vote centers opened at 6:00 AM.
What changed the print settings on these Dell laptops to cause the “image scale” issues at multiple locations, around the same time? Let’s hold this very KEY question until the end, because we need to better understand the “faded image” issue.
Example: For the OKI printer, you can see the “image scale” options that would have been adjusted to create the smaller ballot image on the 20 inch paper:
What failed at 6:00 AM when the vote centers opened?
So far, we have been focused on the “image scale” issue and have not discussed the OKI “faded image” issue that caused ballots to print as if the toner/ink was running low. This “faded image” issue is what occurred when the vote centers opened on election day.
OKI Printer Setting - HEAT
The “faded image” issue deals with the OKI Printer getting hot enough to adhere the print toner to the paper and get a clean, clear print image.
An important note from this clip is that the BACK of the ballot prints first.
Again, this is an example of the “faded image” issue on the back of the Maricopa County ballot. You can clearly see the speckled timing marks that caused the tabulators to reject the ballot.
This is Scott discussing the OKI printer solution for the “faded image” issue. But, this potential solution did not completely fix the “faded image” printing issue as they claimed.
Scott is talking about changing the MEDIAWEIGHT setting on the OTHER two paper trays to HEAVY. Realize that the ballot paper tray was already set to HEAVY, which is the proper setting for the ballot paper heat/fusor temperature.
From a logical standpoint, this does not seem to be a “fix.”
There are many ways that a printer can produce prints that are less than pristine, e.g. using recycled paper, low toner, or even humidity. But when it comes to printer HEAT issues, basic logic dictates that ECO MODE should not be set! Maricopa County had ECO MODE set ON by default.
What does the OKI Printer Manual say about ECO Mode?
“printing starts even when the fuser has NOT REACHED the specified temperature”
Remember, the backside of the ballot printed first! This ECO setting would allow the ballot printing to begin before the HEAT was at the proper temperature for the MEDIAWEIGHT setting of HEAVY! Why would you even risk something like this?
From this statement in the Election Integrity survey, it strongly indicates that the ECO MODE was a contributing factor to the OKI “faded image” issue.
"Perfectly good ballots would print out after a poorly printed one."
You can also see this technician’s text from a vote center with OKI printers that discusses the idea of “harder working, warmer printer”:
When the OKI printers started up in the morning and printed out “faded image” ballots at 6:00AM, those initial tabulator rejections started a day of chaos at the vote centers. It was not obvious that the back of the ballots had “faded image” issue to the poll workers observing the tabulator rejections!
Maricopa County claimed they fixed this issue in the afternoon. You can listen to this video clip of Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates claiming this fix and promising a Root Cause Analysis (deep dive) on what exactly caused the vote center printing chaos.
As of March 2023, there is still no Root Cause Analysis on election day printing failures. They also mislead the public by claiming the issue was “fixed” in the afternoon, and that the printing issues were not as WIDESPREAD as they were in reality.
You can see this technician group text message an hour after the vote center lines closed on election day.
The Dominion tabulator system log files (slog.txt) also show that the printing issue was not fixed in the afternoon. The tabulator rejection rate for all Maricopa County tabulator remained above 7000 per 1/2 hour - ALL DAY!
Also, the roving attorney eyewitness reports from over 100 vote centers contradict Maricopa County’s idea that a “fix” occurred and allow the “vote center’s to get back online.”
Still, the Maricopa County courts sided with the contradictory and lying testimony of Maricopa County officials.
The evidence of Dominion Tabulator system logs and hundreds of sworn affidavit testimony shows that there was no “mechanical malfunctions that were ultimately remedied”, as the court concluded below:
Let’s look at one more Maricopa County contradiction regarding the “faded image” ballot issue, before finishing this article.
Did this ballot printing problem occur during the 26 days of early voting?
Listen to Scott Jarrett and Elections co-director Reynaldo Valenzuela explain that the “faded image” issue never occurred during early voting.
Their testimony and explanations above directly conflict with this sworn affidavit of an election observer at MCTEC on November 2, one week prior to the general election. She describes a growing pile of ballots with “faded timing marks” that needed to be duplicated, since they could not be run through the CENTRAL TABULATORS, i.e. “duplicated before tabulation.”
Let’s finalize this article…
Summary of the Maricopa County Printer Settings Hackathon
First, the deceptive nature of Maricopa County elected officials should be obvious when comparing their statements to the data. The conflicting and deceptive statements shown above are not due to incompetency. Maricopa County has an election services partner named Runbeck that produces the Ballot On Demand product used in the election, i.e. Runbeck’s Sentio Ballot On Demand.
Runbeck assists with retrofitting the OKI printers, paper supply, printer configurations, and troubleshooting. Realize that a product rollout disaster that occurred on election day should have this vendor on the hot-seat to produce a Root Cause Analysis and Corrective Action plan within 2 weeks of the election! Instead, Maricopa County supervisor Bill Gates keeps repeating “we’re sorry.” Don’t be surprised when the “independent deep dive analysis” comes back with the recommendation to UPGRADE ALL PRINTERS TO NEW LEXMARK, Runbeck Sentio Ballot Printing Systems!
Printer Setting Hackathon?
If the WIDESPREAD printing issues were not due to incompetence, then the opposite is pre-meditated, printer sabotage!
6:00 AM - Election Day - Confusion
We know that the tabulator rejections occurred instantly and was most likely due to “faded image” ballot printing. There are MANY reasons this could occur, but the main issue to focus on is the HEAT / WARMUP issue of the printer’s fuser. The toner to paper bond was not working properly when a ballot started to print, i.e. the back side of the ballot.
8:00 AM - Election Day - Something else changed!
Maricopa County blames the “image scale” issue on the technicians accidentally changing printer settings trying to troubleshoot the initial problem. But too many sites had this issue, and we don’t even know the exact number! Why? Because Maricopa County officials are lying about this!
The Victory Lutheran affidavit revealed they had no issues to troubleshoot until about 9:20 AM, and they did not have a technician onsite to accidentally create the “image scale” issue.
10:30 AM - Election Day - BOTH tabulators down!
At Gateway Fellowship and Victory Lutheran, we have Lexmark printers and both tabulators rejecting all ballots. This means that by 10:30 AM, BOTH Lexmark printers at BOTH sites were printing “image scale” ballots that would always be rejected by the tabulators 100% of the time. Wow!
How could this “image scale” hack occur?
The Ballot On Demand printing system was connected to a network, whereas the Dominion tabulators were standalone, non-networked machines. The Ballot On Demand Dell laptops were networked through MOFI, which is very similar to your home, Internet WIFI.
The big, paddle antennas of the MOFI router connect to the 4G cellular wireless network (AT&T or Verizon), just like your mobile phone. These Ballot On Demand Dell laptops connect through this MOFI router using a VPN connection. The VPN connection goes back to the Maricopa County election department.
Using a VPN connection, these Ballot On Demand Dell laptops can be remotely accessed from the Maricopa County corporate network. From a computer on this corporate network, a script can be run to remotely update the printer settings at the vote centers.
Using the Lexmark “image scale” issue at Victory Lutheran as an example, a script could remotely connect to a single Dell Laptop and remotely update the “use full printable area” setting. This would cause a single Lexmark printer at that site to begin printing “image scale” invalid ballots that would be rejected 100% of the time.
But, there would still be one Lexmark printer that is printing fine, which would cause confusion for a while. Why are some ballots being accepted by the tabulators and other ballots are being completely rejected?
Let’s move to 1 hour later, and the second Dell Laptop gets remotely updated to begin printing “image scale” ballots. Now, both Lexmark printers are printing invalid ballots and the tabulators begin to reject all ballots!
Now, think about a voting center like Journey Church. With 3 OKI printers, you would have the immediate “faded image” ballot confusion, which would intermittently print both invalid and valid ballots (depending on fuser HEAT). Then around 8 or 9 AM, one of the Dell Laptops is remotely updated the OKI “image scale” settings, which begin to print ballots that are rejected 100% of the time! Chaos!
This is a basic diagram of how the Lexmark “use full printable area” setting could be remotely changed using a “registry key” update. This concept could also be applied to OKI printer settings.
It would require a forensic audit of the Ballot On Demand Dell laptops to fully understand how the “image scale” printer settings were changed. It would also require a full audit of the misread ballots (supposedly 17,000 ballots) to understand exactly how many sites had the “image scale” settings changed.
We do know most voting centers had massive amounts of tabulator rejections for these TWO major reasons, and Maricopa County elected officials are being deceptive about the root cause!
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A video example of a long line to vote on election day in Maricopa County, Anthem, Arizona, 1pm on November 8, 2022, as a result of the printer settings hack.
going to have to read this a few more times to fully grasp all the information here, but this is really amazing work that im sure took many hours to put together. keep up the good fight. thanks!