Error Requires Thousands Of Pinal County Voters To Receive Two Ballots

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Election officials in Pinal County plan to mail out nearly 63,000 supplemental ballots after a programming error left many voters with a ballot which is missing one or more municipal races, while other voters received ballots with races listed that they are not eligible to vote in.

The discrepancy came to light Thursday as voters who are signed up for early mail-in ballots began receiving their Aug. 2 primary election ballots. The election will determine which candidates move forward in partisan races and is also when voters in various cities and towns elect their council and mayor.

James Daniels, a spokesperson for Pinal County, confirmed seven of the county’s 12 municipalities have been impacted by what has been identified as human error involving a small number of the 900 or so different ballot styles for this year’s primary election.

The impacted municipalities are Apache Junction, Casa Grande, Eloy, Mammoth, Maricopa, Queen Creek, and Superior. Parts of Apache Junction and Queen Creek are within Maricopa County but those voters are not affected.

Elections officials spent hours Friday conferring with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office about the matter, after which the supplemental ballot plan was announced. Instead of reprinting correct ballots for all of the affected voters, Pinal County decided to mail a “supplementary” ballot to voters whose original ballot was missing local races.

Those 63,000 or so supplements will be printed and mail in the next few days. But the supplemental ballot will only contain the missing races. Which is why county officials are urging voters to use the ballot they already have to cast their votes as normal for federal, state, and legislative contests.

As for voters who received mail-in ballots listing municipal elections even though the voter does not live in a city or town, county officials want voters to complete the portions for all federal, state, and legislative contests, and simply ignore the municipal races. Any votes cast in a municipal contests by illegible voters will simply not be registered during the tabulation period, according to the county.

There is no information yet on how many voters received ballots with incorrectly included races.

Pinal County officials say their priority is to get the ballot problem rectified so residents can cast a vote for every race for which they are eligible. Then there will be plenty of time to determine what went wrong and ensure the proper quality control practices are in place for the next election.

“We wish to reassure voters and candidates that election integrity is our top priority and as such, we are taking immediate corrective action for voters in the affected areas,” the county said in a statement.

One elections official in another county said the problem might have been avoided if Pinal County reviewed the total number of times each race was printed on a ballot. However, given the fact some races were left off ballots while the same races were incorrectly included on other ballot the total may not have raised a red flag.

Voters with questions about their ballot may call 520-509-3555 or email communications@pinal.gov.

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