Unauthorized Ballot Paper – Up to 10 Non-Compliant Paper Types Forced 11.2% Adjudication Rate (AZ)

Digital forensic microscopy conducted as part of the post-election audit detected the use of up to 10 different forms of unauthorized, non-compliant ballot paper stock in Maricopa County’s 2020 election. Official Maricopa County ballots have a specific, certified paper specification, calibration marks, and Machine Identification Codes (steganographic hexagonal dots) that identify them as authentic. The use of non-compliant papers caused severe ink bleed-through, forcing an adjudication rate of approximately 11.2% – a 1,000% increase above the 2016 baseline. Adjudication is the process by which human operators override a machine’s reading of a ballot; at an 11.2% rate, hundreds of thousands of ballots had their recorded vote determined by human judgment rather than machine scan, with no surviving adjudication logs to document who made those decisions or how.