Who will you vote for?
FLORENCE, AZ — Pinal County Recorder Virginia Ross became aware of a ballot issue for the 2018 Election Primary. This problem affects voters not registered to a recognized party that are on the Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL). Arizona law allows non-affiliated voters on the PEVL to select a ballot from a recognized party if they choose to vote in the Primary and receive a ballot by mail. In this instance, the voter system retained the ballot selection of voters from the 2016 Election Primary and sent the voter their previous choice unless they had contacted us in this election cycle with their current choice.
“We learned of this problem from the voters calling in stating they had not selected a ballot to be mailed to them.” After researching the problem, we found the error occurred as a result of an invalid system program to purge voter selection after the 2016 Primary Election. This issue affects two other counties.
Recorder Ross has been in touch with the Recorders from the other affected counties to discuss the issue. “We are all very disappointed in the current vendor’s lack of support and look forward to a new voter registration system being implemented in 2019 with a new vendor as the current system is clearly outdated.”
As Pinal had the most voters affected by this ballot issue problem, the following actions are recommended; voters can vote the ballot they received, discard the ballot or contact us for a different party ballot if they so choose. The Secretary of State office sent a file to Pinal County in which we are assessing the number of voters affected by this system error. The last day to request a ballot by mail is August 17th, 2018.