Were 19,000 late, invalid ballots counted in the 2020 Arizona election? No, that's not true: An article making the claim relies on a report that appears to misconstrue what a particular type of receipt shows. It's a record of when election officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, gave early ballot envelopes to a vendor to be scanned, not a receipt of when election officials first came into possession of the envelopes, according to a spokeswoman with the Maricopa County Elections Department. Only ballots received by 7 p.m. MST on Election Day were counted.
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The documents in Verity Vote's report are a record of when election officials in Maricopa County gave early ballot envelopes to a vendor to be scanned, not a receipt of when election officials first came into possession of the envelopes, according to Megan Gilbertson, spokesperson with the Maricopa County Elections Department. In a phone conversation with Lead Stories, on June 3, 2022, she said:
We use another company to scan them in because we have so many, and so those are our receipts to say: 'This is what we delivered to you.'
Gilbertson stressed that only ballots received by 7 p.m. MST on Election Day were counted.