In just a few days, voters across Arizona will have a chance to begin voting in the 2022 primary election to decide which Democrats, Libertarians, and Republicans will move forward to the General Election in November.
For voters in Pima County, there are serious concerns the county’s new in-person voting center system has not undergone enough practices or “mock election” run-throughs to ensure voters do not run into obstacles trying to cast their ballot in person. And that raises more concerns of whether every eligible vote will get properly counted.
It is a worry shared by Bill Beard, a former chair of the Pima County GOP and longtime member of the Pima County Election Integrity Commission, who last Friday called out county officials for not having the election system ready to go yet.
“By their own admission today, their system is not ready,” Beard said. “They’ve not trained the workers necessary to deal with the problems that are going to be real world. Effectively, the people that are in charge of elections in Pima County are disenfranchising voters.”
Beard was referring to a July 1 mock election he took part in with Pima County officials stemming from the county’s switch from 278 precinct polling stations to 129 voting centers. The change allows any qualified county voter to appear in-person at any of the voting center and receive a Ballot on Demand instead of being restricted to voting in-pat only one local precinct polling station.
According to Beard, he was assigned the identity of a Libertarian voter in Precinct 266, one of Pima County’s new precincts in Oro Valley. He waited while the Ballot on Demand system printed what appeared to be the appropriate ballot for that voter.
However, Beard ran into some problems when he tested the county’s process for how a “spoiled” or overvoted ballot would be handled.
Beard says he deliberately voted for four candidates instead of three in the Oro Valley Town Council race listed on the ballot. Under election rules, he had the chance to submit his ballot knowing none of the votes in that race would count or he could request a new ballot.
When Beard requested a new ballot for his mock voter, the new one did not contain the Oro Valley race. That is when Beard spoke with Constance Hargrove, Pima County’s new elections director, who explained that the voter database being used was from 2018 when the county had only 249 precincts.
“When I pointed out that given the parameters she was indicating it was impossible to have received the first ballot, she didn’t not really have an answer,” Beard noted, adding that he was then told he could vote the second ballot, even though it was not identical to the first one he was initially provided.
The issues Beard highlighted with the July 1 mock election are similar to those he exposed following a June 24 practice run during which he was directed to a Special Conditions table where he was instructed to cast a Provisional Ballot.
He also took issue with Pima County’s characterization that last month’s event was a success and that the majority of the 70 or so mock voters were in and out “without problem.”
Such a statement was misleading, according to Beard, for the 20 or so of the voters who ran into difficulties and had to be passed along to the Special Conditions table for assistance.
“It took them over 25 minutes to resolve my particular issue and they did not have the Provisional Ballot envelopes that you must fill out by hand present for their demonstration,” Beard noted. “I’m pretty versed in what should and shouldn’t be happening at the Special Conditions table. The average voter is not. They will be frustrated and the election workers will likely not have the training to handle a large number of seriously frustrated voters.”
Beard also anticipates many voters, especially Republicans, will opt for in-person voting during the primary election even if they received an early ballot for voting by mail. This could result in more voters being required by county elections officials to complete a Provisional Ballot.
“This is two mock elections they have failed to provide adequate representation of real-world training, staffing or ability to handle even simple problems that will occur in the 2022 election cycle,” Beard said.
MORE ON BEARD’S THOUGHTS >>> strong>