Long before the polls closed on last November’s Election Day in Arizona, videos of voters waiting in long lines, and others with ballots in hand struggling with failing tabulators, filled social media feeds. The video footage caused extreme embarrassment for Maricopa County elections officials and raised doubts about the processes they employed.
Now, a video shows just how broken Arizona’s voter registration system is and how risky it is to wait until Election Day to vote.
In the video, shot in a Maricopa County voting center, a woman is seen using the “e-poll” system. She has already swiped her Arizona-issued driver’s license once and is told the license number belongs to “multiple voters.” At the point where the video begins, the woman swipes her license again in response to an official’s instructions. Once again, a message appears on the screen, “Multiple voter records found!” The official then swipes her access card, and a voter record for a man who died in Utah in 2020 appears. The official notes that the same “multiple records” message appears even when the voter uses her social security number.
The voter was forced to cast a provisional ballot which she later learned was rejected. At no time did she receive a notice from any government entity that her voter registration had lapsed, was compromised, or was cancelled for any reason.
While elections officials say that it is up to the individual voter to know their registration status, the average voter assumes their tax dollars are being spent on a system that catches errors rather than creates them. As a result, only the most politically sophisticated voters understand the complexities of our voter registration system, and just how many cracks there are through which a voter can fall.
Improvements in voter education, voter registration, ballot processing, signature verification, and voter notification must be made post haste if we hope to keep voters engaged and our Republic secure.
Until that happens, voters should be very vigilant about their registration status and take advantage of opportunities to vote early so that problems may be spotted and corrected in time. Advising voters to vote only on election day may backfire and fail to give voters the time they need to ensure their ballots are counted.