Approximately 16,000 mail in ballots were delivered to the Pima County Recorder’s Office late Wednesday afternoon. Many voters were holding on to their ballots last Friday, the deadline to mail in ballots, due to fears of ballot tampering and rumors of election fraud.
Conspiracy theorists, and a Tucson area conservative talk show duo, who engaged in an expensive and months long smear campaign of nearly all Pima County departments, advised voters to hold on to their ballots so that the Recorder’s Office couldn’t leak information out about which candidates were ahead in various races and affect the outcome. As a result, voters mailed in ballots just in time to receive the legally required postmark date.
In all, over 63,000 provisional ballots have yet to be counted from precincts across Pima County.
Late Wednesday morning the Recorder’s Office still could not account for three missing boxes of ballots, or ascertain which precincts the boxes had the unaccounted for boxes. By mid-day, the Recorder had received two of the three boxes. One box remained unaccounted for.
On Tuesdau, many voters arrived at their polling places to find their names weren’t on the list, due to the failure of the Recorder to create voter signature registers updated with newly registered voters. As a result, the registered voters were forced to cast provisional ballots. Pima County has a reputation for election issues.
In 2008, the ACLU found Pima County to be the worst offender in disenfranchising voters because the county invalidated 18 percent of provisional ballots because voters went to the wrong polling place in that election.
This year, in a rare effort to save taxpayer dollars, the Recorder, F. Ann Rodriguez, opted to reduce the number of polling places, resulting in a wide-spread change of polling places for voters.
It will take days to finish counting local ballots and make results official. Results in races from the U.S. Congress to school boards are expected as late as next Tuesday.