ELECTION IN TUMULT
Lines, delays frustrate voters
When voting began at 6 a.m. Tuesday, 62 Maricopa County polling places were not ready for voters.
The check-in equipment that allows poll workers to verify voters’ identity had not been set up, leaving some voters unable to secure ballots for hours.
The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office blamed its IT contractor for the issues. The Tempe-based contractor pointed the finger back at what it said was an unprepared Recorder’s Office.
Regardless of fault, thousands of Maricopa County voters found themselves bouncing between voting locations, casting provisional ballots or, in some cases, giving
up on voting altogether.
“This is not a hiccup,” Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes conceded. “This is a serious concern where voters across Maricopa County couldn’t get voting.”
Fontes and Secretary of State Michele Reagan hatched a plan to keep voting booths open an extra two hours to try to compensate for the early-morning issues, but it was derailed by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which feared extending the voting deadline would confuse voters.
The problems triggered flashbacks to the 2016 presidential-preference election, when tens of thousands of voters were frustrated by long lines, causing more than 100,000 to walk away from the polls without casting ballots.
County Recorder Helen Purcell lost her job over the fiasco, paving the way for Fontes, who was elected after promising to overhaul the balloting system.
Tuesday’s election issues were exclusive to Maricopa County.
Arizona has 3.6 million registered voters, 2.2 million of whom live in Maricopa County.
The “SiteBooks,” which store voterregistration information and let voters check in at the polls, were not properly installed at some polling places on Monday, leaving voters unable to secure ballots Tuesday morning.
The check-in equipment requires an internet connection to access the voter registration database. If voters cannot check in, they cannot vote.
By 10 a.m., four sites were still closed. All were open by 11:30 a.m, Fontes said, though voters reported issues at polling places well into the afternoon.
Fontes and a Tempe-based technology company are trading blame for the lack of preparedness.
The county hired Insight Enterprises, a global-information technology contractor, to set up voter check-in equipment on Monday and provide technical support on Tuesday, the Recorder’s Office and an Insight representative said.
Insight successfully provided the Recorder’s Office with setup services earlier this year for 55 polling sites in the Congressional District 8 special election, according to an email to county staff from Keely Varvel, chief deputy for the County Recorder’s Office.
The Recorder’s Office said the primary election contract called for 103 Insight employees to set up polling sites Monday, but only 73 technicians showed up, according to Varvel’s email. Insight had a different story. Company spokesman Scott Walters told The Arizona Republic that the company was hired to provide 83 employees to set up equipment Monday and 40 technicians on election day to troubleshoot, with additional support as needed.
The company provided more employees than required — 85 on Monday and 60 on Tuesday — Walters said in an email.
The Recorder’s Office said technicians were so behind that they missed appointments with building owners to set up polling locations, which are typically at churches, schools and other community buildings, the email to county officials said.
When it became clear the 463 sites would not be ready on schedule, the Recorder’s Office called building owners to reschedule appointments to activate equipment Monday night and Tuesday morning and trained county staff how to set up the equipment, the email said.
On Tuesday morning, “The contractor again failed to produce the number of staff they had promised, and so many sites were not set up in a timely way,” Varvel wrote.
Insight officials said only 43 sites were inoperable by the time polls opened Tuesday morning. But Walters said the county was at fault, not his company.
The reason the voting sites did not open on time was because the Recorder’s Office was unprepared, he said.
“Voter validation machines were not fully operational ... almost exclusively as a result of lack of site readiness and on-site connectivity issues,” Walters wrote. “Insight’s responsibilities to provide technical support did not extend to those matters.”
Insight “is committed to working with the county to ensure that disruptions to the voting process do not continue in future elections,” Walters said.
At about noon, Reagan called for Fontes to seek a court order keeping select polling places open past 7 p.m. because of the reported problems.
Local election experts said they couldn’t remember a time, at least in recent history, when polling hours were changed on election day.
In Arizona, poll hours are dictated by state law, which says polls must be open in every precinct from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The county would have had to secure a court order to override the law, said Amy Chan, who served as state election director from 2009 to 2013.
Tuesday afternoon, Fontes said his office was working with the County Attorney’s Office and discussing keeping polling sites open late.
But the Board of Supervisors, the head county decision makers, quashed the idea in a sharp statement criticizing Fontes.
“The board is being asked to step in and take unprecedented action that may confuse voters, delay returns and have other unintended consequences,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Steve Chucri said in a statement at 3:45 p.m.
“We encourage any voter who wants to cast their ballot to be in line at any of your designated polling places by 7 p.m. and their vote will be counted.”
Reagan’s office said she was “disappointed for the voters who were inconvenienced this morning and hope they have the opportunity to vote this afternoon.”
Kristina Kelly wanted to be the first person voting at her polling location, the Via Linda Senior Center in Scottsdale. That’s because she’s running for state Senate in Legislative District 23.
But the location was closed when she went to vote with her mother at 6 a.m.
Volunteers told her computers were never delivered and never set up for voters. She and her mother then went to nearby Mountain View Community Center, where a volunteer took her name down on a yellow legal pad and gave her a ballot.
“We definitely need to learn from this,” Kelly said. “People told me they don’t feel included or part of the process, and then to top it off they get to the polling location and this happens. That’s incredibly frustrating.”
Scottsdale resident Joe Cerrito dropped off his ballot at about 4:10 p.m. at the Mountain View Community Center. He said it was the third polling location he had been to on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, one polling location near Scottsdale Road and Acoma Drive was closed, he said. Another location had a long line, he said, even for people who were there to just drop off ballots.
Noelle Stovell and her husband went at 6 a.m. to the polling location they’ve been voting at for the past 15 years. But they arrived to find the building closed and completely dark.
Stovell says they then went on a scavenger hunt looking for their next polling location, tucked away in the back of a trailer park off Cave Creek Road. They arrived to find that none of the voting machines had been set up, with the location accepting only mail-in ballots.
The Stovells ultimately had to head to a temporary voting location at Paradise Valley Community College, where only provisional ballots were available.
“My vote might not even count,” Stovell said. “This is absolutely ridiculous.”
Not all complaints related to the late openings of polling sites.
State Rep. Jeff Weninger, R-Chandler, tweeted that voters in Legislative District 18 received incorrect ballots for 30 minutes in one precinct.
Dick Conser, who is from the Choctaw Nation but lives in Maricopa County, said there was no option on the voting screen to submit his tribal ID to check in at his Scottsdale polling place.
The poll worker said he had to vote by provisional ballot, which will not be counted until after electiondDay.
There were also reports of some voters experiencing long lines towards the end of the night at a couple of Phoenix and Tempe locations.
Reagan’s office said it did not plan to pursue legal action regarding the closure of polls or the decision not to keep them open late.
Voters could sue, though, if they felt their right to vote was denied, said Joseph Kanefield, a Phoenix election-law attorney who served as the state’s election director from 2004 to 2009.
To prove they were disenfranchised, voters would be required to prove that they were unable to vote otherwise, even after being directed to another location, Kanefield said — a high burden to prove.
But Chan said that if some of the precincts didn’t open on time, that might be proof enough that their right was denied.
If a lawsuit does arise, the court may be able to look at one case in the state’s distant past for direction.
In 1912, the Arizona Supreme Court took up a case involving an election for county treasurer in Santa Cruz County, Kanefield said.
On Election Day, one precinct’s polling place didn’t open because it lacked the proper number of poll workers and supplies hadn’t arrived. The loser of the election, who lost by only six votes, contested the election, Kanefield said.
The court found that it would not overturn the result of the election in a situation where polls opened late unless someone could show that there was fraud on the part of election officials, or unless someone could show that the closure affected the result of the election, Kanefield said.
The court, in that case, did not overturn the result.