Could the Crowdstrike Outage Disrupt Maricopa County’s Primary Election? Election Officials Respond

Officials assure they will have increased resources staffed on Election Day to respond to a similar outage if it were to happen again.

PHOENIX — Maricopa County Elections officials reported minimal impact on vote centers from last week’s global tech outage. Voting machines and tabulators, which are not internet-connected, remained operational. The issue affected the vote-center ballot-on-demand check-in system.

Despite the glitch, hundreds managed to cast their early ballots. The problem was triggered by a CrowdStrike update, and efforts are underway to determine why it was pushed to the check-in system.

“We feel like we had a fairly low impact. Still, almost 400 people voted on Friday,” said Fields Moseley, Maricopa County Communications Director. “We opened at 9 a.m. with four vote centers open and had a rolling opening all day long as those were fixed and 40 were opened before the end of the day. None of the tabulators were affected by this. They’re on an air-gap system. They’re not connected to the internet.”

The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Arizona have expressed concerns. They have raised questions in a letter to the Maricopa County Elections Director about the tech issue.

“The most recent occurrence is extremely worrisome due to the online nature of the issue and the implications if this were to happen on Election Day,” read the letter.

Maricopa County Elections leaders explained potential responses if a similar issue arises on Election Day. “We will have over 240 vote centers open, so if a vote center does go down, people can go to a different vote center. We will have increased resources and technology personnel,” said Jennifer Liewer, Deputy Elections Director for Communications. “We are prepared to be responsive if something occurs on Election Day.”

Arizona’s Primary Election is only a week away, with expected voter turnout of around 30 percent. Maricopa County is active in combating misinformation and ensuring voters are informed correctly. They have dedicated $400,000 for advertising before the Primary Election and anticipate up to $1.1 million in spending by the General Election in November.

“We can’t stop people from delivering incorrect information,” Moseley said. “Hopefully, the correct information will mitigate that, but we’ve seen how this cycle works in recent years.”