WATCH: Arizona officials claim that every ballot will count after a printing error

PHOENIX (AP) — Election officials assured voters that every ballot would be counted after a printing malfunction at about one-quarter of the polling places across Arizona’s most populous county slowed down voting.

The snag on Tuesday fueled conspiracy theories about the integrity of the vote in the tightly contested state as former President Donald Trump, GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and others tried to make the case that Democrats were seeking to subvert the vote of Republicans, who tend to show up in greater numbers in person on Election Day.

Officials said that 17,000 ballots in Maricopa County were affected. This is about 7 percent of the 275,000 votes dropped Tuesday. There are approximately 4.5million people living in the county, which also includes Phoenix. More than 80 percent of those who vote early are eligible to do so by mail.

The issue at 60 of the 223 vote centres was that printers didn’t produce enough dark markings on the ballots. Some voters tried to insert their ballots into tabulators but were told to wait or to use another machine. They were due to be counted Wednesday.

Officials fixed the problem by changing the settings on the printer.

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After polls closed, Republican Bill Gates, chairman of the county’s board of supervisors, apologized and said “every voter had the opportunity to vote and have their vote counted.”

Most Arizona counties don’t count ballots at the polling place. Officials take the ballots to a central center for counting.

At the county’s tabulation center on Wednesday, workers wore purple gloves to protect the paper from dirt and sweat and used metal carts to carry stacks of boxes containing ballots to be scanned into election machines. Before workers could begin the tabulation process, election adjudicators watched. They labeled and sealed the boxes with red tape to protect them from future challenges.

Midday saw no protests at the building.

As part of the security Tuesday night outside the county’s tabulation center in downtown Phoenix, 11 officers patrolled the area on horseback, a fairly common practice at protests in metropolitan Phoenix in the past. Even hours after the polls close, no protesters were visible at the spot.

“There’s nothing that happened here today that would indicate a need to be out here, a need to address some injustice,” Gates said. “We had an issue with printers that has been addressed by the good people of Maricopa County.”

Voting was slowed in traditionally Democratic and Republican areas as well as at an outlet mall in conservative Anthem. There were some voters who waited several hours to cast their vote using one of the two tabulators that worked.

Lake and several other candidates on the Arizona ballot have pushed false claims about the 2020 presidential race, amplifying Trump’s lies about a stolen election. But election officials from both political parties and members of Trump’s own Cabinet have said there was no widespread voter fraud and that Trump lost reelection to Democrat Joe Biden.

This report was contributed by Bob Christie and Jacques Billeaud, both Associated Press writers.