American conservatives, Donald Trump in the lead, on Tuesday denounced localized technical incidents in polling stations for the mid-term elections, the former American president going so far as to call on his supporters to “contest” the results.
“Proxy voting in Detroit is not going well at all. People show up to vote and hear themselves answer: “Sorry, you have already voted”, affirmed Donald Trump on his Truth Social network.
“It is happening in large numbers, and elsewhere. Challenge, challenge, challenge! “, hammered the American billionaire, who never recognized his defeat in the presidential election of 2020.
The independent organization Vote.org, confirmed in a statement the existence of “technical problems with voting machines in some states”, while stressing that the authorities were doing “everything to […] ensure voters have other options for casting their ballot today. »
In Arizona, a hotly contested state capable of swinging the election for both sides, the ballot was disrupted by technical problems affecting the machines responsible for reading or printing ballots in some 60 polling stations in the county of Maricopa, more than a quarter of the places planned for the poll.
Enough to cause a lively controversy in the Grand Canyon State, where Joe Biden had beaten Donald Trump by barely 10,000 votes in 2020. This county, which has 4.5 million inhabitants and includes the capital Phoenix, had then concentrated a large part of the accusations – rejected after several audits and recounts – of electoral fraud.
The incidents caused lineups at several offices on Tuesday, but the county election department assured on Twitter that it did not stop voters from casting their ballots. In the early afternoon, he published a list of 111 offices – out of 223 – without any queues.
A few hours later, the national leadership of the Republican Party announced that it was filing an appeal to demand the extension of the opening hours of the polling stations in the evening, denouncing “widespread problems […] totally unacceptable” in a press release.
” Alternative solution “
For offices where the problems remain, an “alternative solution” is planned, insisted Bill Gates, one of the Maricopa County officials. Voters can deposit their ballots in a “secure box”, which will then be opened “later in the evening” to count the votes with working machines.
‘It’s incompetence,’ blasted Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who accused Joe Biden of being an illegitimate president during his campaign, despite investigations showing the validity of the results of 2020.
“I hope it’s not malicious, but we’ll find a solution and we’ll win,” added the 50-year-old, after voting in Phoenix around midday.
This close friend of Donald Trump, however, refrained from contesting the results of the election in advance, while calls to demonstrate in the counties of Maricopa and Pima are already flourishing on social networks.
“I don’t know what problems will emerge,” she explained, calling on her supporters to “queue” undeterred and hammering home her promise to fundamentally reform the electoral system if they win.
Early in the morning, one of the polling stations in downtown Phoenix encountered problems with its machines, AFP journalists found. Only voters who had already prepared their ballot sealed in an envelope could drop it off, the others were instructed to go to another office 500 meters away.
Enough to reinforce an already deleterious atmosphere in this southwestern state, where lookouts, sometimes armed, have recently watched the metal ballot boxes, similar to mailboxes, allowing voters to deposit their ballots in advance.
“This machine should have been tested a long time ago, last week”, annoyed Donald Newton, a Republican voter who managed to vote in the neighboring office, and remains convinced that the 2020 election “was stolen “.
Like many people met by AFP in the past two weeks, the octogenarian subscribes to a conspiracy thesis fueled by a far-right documentary, according to which the ballot boxes were stuffed in 2020.
“It’s starting again,” exclaimed another voter, asked to go to another polling station and who did not want to give his name.
On Twitter, Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward claimed that “this isn’t just happening in Arizona.”
Other conservative lawmakers spoke of problems in New Jersey.