[MtnClimber]

I think that the elections people did not expect the ballot size to be noticed. And now they may not have a believable excuse.

[Jemian]

Apparently, it was changed at the voting site, but the tabulator was set to read it at the 20” setting. Therefore, the markings would be in all the wrong places all over the paper.

[Sirius Lee]

In Maricopa’s case, the ballots were too short but not not too skinny. I’m not sure shrink or enlarge to fit would solve the issue.

[Delta 21]

If you cant figure out the proper way to print the ballot so the liberals get the same one the conservatives do, and you work for the election commision, then maybe you need thrown in prison with the rest of the societal dregs.

[UnwashedPeasant]

I think the writer is mistaken and that shrink-to-fit is a normal printer feature.

However, any program for printing scannable ballots must be precise about the scale it prints at. If someone uses the wrong printer settings for ballots in Republican areas, that is not a plausible mistake.

[texas booster]

I guess that it depends if the software is using a Windows or Adobe print to pdf feature.

All of those have print to fit features and it may be on by default.

[TheBattman]

The voting apparatus here where I live - the printers are built into each of the voting machines we use to fill ballots. Cannot speak to Arizona. But we are handed a blank ballot (nothing but a small barcode). The voting machine actually prints all the ballot data when you finalize and review your votes.

[agere_contra]

What I missed Thursday is where they allege that the shrink to fit option was set

Because they didn't allege it.

The ballots were deliberately printed 19 inch image to 20 inch paper in order to prevent tabulation. This could only be done with password access.

[Yo-Yo]

I primarily know of one program that offers a shrink to fit option: Excel.

PDF also provides shrink to fit as a printing option.

[Pontiac]

If they had this kind of problem and did not discover it until Election Day, the entire staff should be fired.

The fact that they had issues at 70 different voting places screams Fraud at 170 decibels.

If it wasn’t fraud it was incompetence on a global scale.

Either way people should be out of a job.

[rlmorel]

Here is the thing. If someone has Administrative level (root) access to a system, they can do anything they want. This includes deleting logs, editing logs with a text editor, or even in some cases, turning logging functionality off, doing their dirty work, and then turning it back on again.

And I can tell you with great certainty, that there was likely no shortage of hostiles who had access to the full root/administrative access who had the knowledge and ideological willingness to use their knowledge to ill effect.

[Fido969]

Almost all copiers will shrink or expand the image, not just “ very high priced ones”.

[Dan in Wichita]

The attorney for Maricopa county argued that the fault is with the Republicans because so many waited until Election Day to cast their votes.

If the judge buys that argument, it could not be more obvious the fix is in.

[MayflowerMadam]

“just because you are familiar with shrink to fit in Excel...”

It’s an option in PDF docs, too — “fit to page”. And Word — “scale to paper size”. Probably all/most applications.

The thing is, it can’t accidentally occur like Hobbs’ team implies. A human being has do make the decision and then make the changes.

[ByteMercenary]

Resizing a digital file that represents a ballot is not done in a printer. Any resizing is done in the computer by software and then the data is sent to the printer. It is not a trivial task. Adobe Acrobat, Windoze Work/Excel, and many other applications can do it with the help of formatting libraries that are available to the program in the form of ‘.dll’ or ‘.so’ files. These are easily detectable during even a light forensic exam of a computer.

There is absolutely no reason for these type libraries to exist on a ballot tabulating machine.

[Chode]

It was NOT on accident...

[joe fonebone]

This is far worse than shrink to fit...
Both the large and small ballots fit on the same paper.
If you look at the ballots, the margins have been re-sized.
Re-size the margins, THEN shrink to fit margins.
This cannot be done by accident.

[Ouderkirk]

I would have to know what “printers” were being used.

Commercial printers, have RIP (Raster Image Processor) servers which are used to align the images as the page passes under the the print head. Think like the horzontal hold function on the old tube stye TV’s. as the “picture” rolls over the image remains. The faster it rolls, the more processing power is needed to to maintain the image.

Most non-commercial printers, the driver software is limited to commercially available paper (8 1/2 x 11, A4 etc.) and ICC color profiles. 8 1/2 x 20” paper is not necessarily available at Staples or Walmart, and your standard printer won’t accept it. Most ballots are produced on commercial “roll to cut” machines with a 9 1/2” roll and then post printing, continuous slit to width and then cut to length based on the profile used at the “stacker” .

This system used in Arizona where the ballot is produced Pint on Demand, and then scanned is very peculiar. Almost as if it was designed to do exactly what it did.

[cpdiii]

I have worked with Oki, Brother, HP, Epson, etc., and I can't remember the printers generally having a shrink to fit option. Printers are designed to receive data and print it. There is only so much processing power in a printer, and typically, printers just don't have the processing power required to resize an image

My printer on its own will not do this. If I send it from my computer, I can make it any size I want.

[Pollard]

Sometimes there's a percentage you can set. I print my shipping labels at the library and ended up with some labels that were half sized because the last person to print something had changed the setting to 50%.

Seems like the AZ ballots were printed at 110% or something. That made the print output for what was a 19 inch ballot print to approx 20 inch.

Here's my print dialog for this browser.

There's also a choice of paper size and the 19 inch ballots would have to be a custom paper size setting. That's a different dialog and is not the browser but System Print Dialog to manage/add custom paper sizes.

Of course this is browser/system settings. Every program that one would commonly print from has some kind of print settings. A program made to print ballots on demand would definitely allow for custom paper settings.

With so many ballot printers having issues, I'd say there were settings that were changed via the network. The alternative of 30, 40 individuals doing it per location doesn't seem likely. I think someone did it via network and the individual people per location were conveniently not trained to deal with it.

Hobbs' job was to set things up, like training people. Guess she sure did set things up.