Katie Hobbs fucking over primary elections

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

Sasha Hupka

Arizona Republic

Pinal County officials said Friday that they will be mailing supplementary ballots with city and town races after an estimated63,000 early ballots with errors were sent to votersahead 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.

Daniels said it's "too early to tell" how soon those would go out. "We're working toward it as quickly as possible," he said.

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 that, too.

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.

The issues come amid intense scrutiny of elections 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.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/pinal/2022/07/08/some-pinal-county-early-ballots-go-voters-without-municipal-races/10016843002/