Pinal County to send supplementary ballots after nearly 63K early ballots went to voters with errors

Pinal County officials said Friday that they will be mailing supplementary ballots with city and town races after an estimated 63,000 early ballots with errors were sent to voters ahead of the Aug. 2 primary election.

Ballots in Superior, Maricopa, Casa Grande, Eloy and Mammoth, as well as the Pinal County portions of Apache Junction and Queen Creek, were sent out this week without city and town contests printed on them, according to Pinal County spokesperson James Daniels. The contests erroneously appeared on ballots sent to voters in nearby unincorporated areas who are not eligible to vote in the municipal races, he said.

Pinal County runs south and east of the Valley and includes some 450,000 residents.

Daniels said officials initially heard about the issue Thursday afternoon. After hours of meetings between the county's Elections Department and the Arizona Secretary of State's Office, officials announced Friday evening that they will send supplementary ballots by mail to affected voters.

Impacted voters should expect those supplemental ballots to arrive in their mailboxes early the week of July 18.

Here's how county officials say it will work: Voters who received a ballot missing municipal races should fill out and mail back that initial ballot to cast their votes in federal, state and legislative contests. Once they receive the supplementary ballot with just their city or town races, they can vote on that, too.

Elections: How to vote in Arizona's 2022 primary election

For voters in unincorporated areas of the county who erroneously had municipal contests on their ballot, officials said to go ahead and vote on the federal, state and legislative contests. Officials said any ineligible votes for city or town contests from these ballots would not be counted.

While everyone can vote by mail or in-person in federal, state and legislative contests, affected voters will not be able to cast their supplemental ballots in person for local races in impacted municipalities. To vote in those contests, the supplementary ballot must be mailed back or dropped off at a polling site or official ballot drop box.

The issues come amid intense scrutiny of election officials in the aftermath of unfounded allegations of widespread fraud in Arizona during the 2020 presidential election. Those claims were dismissed in dozens of courtrooms in Arizona and around the country. An Arizona Senate Republican-ordered ballot review and hand recount in Maricopa County attempted to raise questions about election security but found no widespread fraud.

"It's looking like it's just simple human error," Daniels said. "There's nothing to suggest anything untoward, or anything related to technology or anything like that."

Upset local officials react: 'It is screwed up majorly'

Officials across the county said their phones have been ringing off the hook since the ballot issues were discovered on Thursday afternoon.

Casa Grande Mayor Craig McFarland said he and other municipal leaders are "pretty upset" about the errors and that "it is not a good situation."

Apache Junction Mayor Chip Wilson said he has spoken with several candidates for local positions who are "not happy."

"It is not only screwed up a little bit; it is screwed up majorly," Wilson said.

He said he knows people who already mailed their ballots back in.

"They filled them out immediately and mailed them in right away," Wilson said.

Election guide: 2022 primaries

U.S. Senate | Governor |Secretary of state|Legislature | Treasurer | County attorney |Attorney general| Superintendent | Corporation Commission | District 1 | District 3 | District 4| District 5| District 6|District 8| District 9 | City council

Although the county now has a remedy to the problem, McFarland said "the perception is terrible."

He said the "terrible timing" of the errors will "fuel the Arizona controversies" that emerged in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

County officials aimed to reassure voters on Friday evening.

"Here at Pinal County, we strive for excellence, trust and transparency, particularly when it comes to elections, and we recognize the significance of these errors," officials said in a statement. "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."

Editorial Board: Voting in the primary is safe. Here's how we know

County responsibility and a new elections director at the helm

City officials blamed the county for errors in the ballots.

"I'm not going to point fingers at anybody, but it is the county's responsibility to make sure that the ballots are identified for the correct residents," McFarland said.

City officials usually review lists of the races that will be on the ballot for their cities and a list of candidates for each contest before ballots are sent out. But the county Elections Department is in charge of printing ballots and getting them to early voters. For the upcoming election, officials were tasked with printing more than 900 ballot styles.

"Cities and towns have other responsibilities, but in terms of printing the ballots, mailing out the early voting ballots and the day of the elections, they conduct that part of it," Casa Grande Clerk Gloria Leija said.

Even before ballots were mailed, Wilson said Apache Junction officials had to ask the county Elections Department to correct several errors in the lists of races and candidates sent to the city before early ballots were printed. After several rounds of back-and-forth, the issues were fixed and Wilson believed "the city's portion of the ballot was going to be correct."

"(The clerk) had to work with the county to correct some problems, which included misspelling my opponents' name," Wilson said. "They had to correct it three times in order to get it correct, and once they mailed the fourth one to her, it was correct."

Leija said her office did not encounter issues similar to what Wilson described in Apache Junction.

The county has a new elections director.

The county was without an elections director after Michele Forney left at the end of 2020 for a job with the state of Nevada.

To spearhead election planning, voting and tabulation, the county hired its current director, David Frisk, from Kitsap County in Washington, where he was a programs manager for the Elections Division.

Reach reporter Sasha Hupka at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @SashaHupka.

If this story mattered to you, please support our work. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Pinal County primary ballots mailed to voters without municipal races