OKI’s B432dn
In part II of the Oki, Maricopa County election ballot furore, The County Attorney says “the Oki B432 printer is a quality printer”.
Following issues with ballot tabulation in Maricopa County’s November 2022 election due to printer problems, an investigation report was released in April 2023. The report cited printer failures with the Oki B432 printers. OKI, the printer manufacturer, took umbrage with the report and sent a letter to Maricopa County pointed out three factual errors in the report. You can read the news story here.
Fast forward to June of this year and Rachel Mitchell the Maricopa County Attorney wrote back to the OKI CEO, Dennie Kawahara [still with me?] defending the report, but did confirm that “the Oki B432 printer is a quality printer; if it were not so, it would not have been selected for use by the Maricopa County Elections Department. The printing failures, which occurred in Maricopa County on election day in some (not all) of the Oki B432 printers were the result of the printers being pushed to the limits of their capacity.”
Fast fusers: One item of contention was the fact that election staff wanted fusers that could be replaced in seconds, like a toner cartridge. Whereas it does require some printer knowledge and tools. Then there was the issue of the large size ballot papers, and the non-OEM enlarged paper trays…
At this stage you would expect OKI and Maricopa County to call it quits, but no. OKI wrote back in July this year maintaining that the enquiry should still have spoken with an OKI expert. But do not get too excited, expect a chasm of silence.
For the insomniacs among you, you can read the original report and all the letters between OKI and Maricopa County here.
Our take on this: It’s not our job to support OKI, or any other OEM, but having read the report, we see the potential reputational harm that could be caused and the clarifications go a long way to address this. But the bottom line is if you use a van to tow a 40 ton trailer, some will fail. Ditto if you push any printer beyond its limits.
