Counties reach deal on verifying ballots
Offices will ‘cure’ through Wednesday; GOP lawsuit averted
Friday began with a social media uproar over allegations of Arizona voter fraud, as the nation awaited the results of the state’s too-close-to-call U.S. Senate race and Arizona Republican groups prepared to take local elections officials to court.
Their lawsuit, in reality, contained no allegations of voter fraud. The legal challenge centered on a procedural lack of consistency in the time frame counties allow voters to correct signature issues on mail-in ballots.
About 20 minutes before the hearing, representatives of the Arizona Republican Party held a news conference and confidently told reporters, “The Democrats are stealing the election and we’re not going to allow it.”
In the end, the counties whose election practices they ended up changing were largely run by Republicans.
The events inside the courtroom were far less dramatic. Minutes after the news conference and before the hearing, all of the counties and the Republican groups
“I think every eligible United States citizen who is casting a valid ballot that is verified should have that ballot count.” Adrian Fontes Maricopa County recorder
had come to an agreement. The judge approved it with little fanfare. Per the settlement, all of Arizona’s counties will allow voters to verify the signatures on their ballots through 5 p.m. Wednesday.
The legal battle was likely little more than a messy pit stop on the long route left to determine the next U.S. senator from Arizona.
An attorney for the state Republican Party said after the hearing that the settlement was a win for Republican senate candidate Martha McSally, but it’s not clear if it’s true. McSally was trailing Democrat Kyrsten Sinema by about 20,000 votes as of Friday night.
The lawsuit centered on the length of time that voters have to rectify signature mismatches on the green envelopes that contain mail-in ballots.
When counties receive mail-in ballots, election workers attempt to check the signature against the voter’s signature on record. If the workers cannot verify the signature, the county attempts to contact voters to allow them to confirm their ballot. All of Arizona’s 15 counties take part in this process before Election Day, but only a handful of them allow voters to continue “curing” their ballots after Election Day.
That inconsistency is what the Republican Party wanted a judge to rectify.
Maricopa and Coconino counties, both of which have Democratic county recorders running their elections, had planned to allow voters to cure their ballots through Nov. 14. Apache and Pinal counties had planned to stop curing Friday, and Pima County had planned to stop Saturday.
The other counties stopped curing ballots at 7 p.m. on Election Day.
“Under the current varied practices of the defendant county recorders, the vote of citizens in rural counties is diluted because their recorders cut off the ability to cure early ballot signature issues, while voters in other counties such as Pima and Maricopa have a far greater likelihood of having their votes counted because their recorders continue to allow early ballots to be cured well past Election Day,” the Republican groups argued in court records.
McSally has performed strongest in rural counties, while Sinema is the front-runner in Maricopa and Pima counties, where vote curing is permitted for a longer period of time.
The Republican groups have argued that Maricopa, Pima, Coconino, Pinal and Apache counties should never have allowed vote curing after Election Day, but now that they have, the court should require all counties to permit voters to cure early ballots until 5 p.m. Wednesday. That was ultimately what the counties agreed to do.
The number of ballots with signature issues in each county is unclear. Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes said his office had around 5,600 as of Thursday afternoon. Navajo County has about 25, according to court records.
The settlement applies only to this election. The rules could change for future elections.
The rhetoric about the lawsuit by both Republicans and Democrats was actually the same: “Count all votes.”
When the lawsuit was initially filed Wednesday, it was unclear whether the Republicans were seeking to stop Maricopa and Pima counties from curing ballots, or if they were looking to extend the practice to all counties. Democrats assumed it was the former, which spurred criticism and claims of Republican voter suppression.
“I think every eligible United States citizen who is casting a valid ballot that is verified should have that ballot count,” Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes said.
By Thursday, Republicans said they were looking to expand the curing time frame for all counties, because they, too, wanted all ballots to count — including those in rural counties where recorders had stopped curing ballots.
At the news conference before the court hearing, McSally supporters held signs that read, “Rural Votes Matter” and “Count Every Vote.”
Arizona Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich intervened in the lawsuit. In a tweet, he said, “The same rules should apply for all voters, regardless of where you live in AZ.”
In a tweet, state Elections Director Eric Spencer with the Republican-led Secretary of State’s Office said the issue was “hotly debated” among county recorders in preparation for the election and no consensus could be reached.
He said the Secretary of State’s Office decided at the time not to force a decision “amidst strongly conflicting views.”
After the hearing, Arizona Republican Party attorney Kory Langhofer suggested more challenges could be on the way.
“We’re really concerned about the way ballots are being counted, particularly in Maricopa County,” he said.