Voters triumph over challenges at Tucson polling places

It didn’t make sense.

Diana Fierro had voted in three prior elections. But on Tuesday afternoon, only her husband, Efren, was allowed to vote. Diana’s registration was listed as inactive, said Fierro, 27.

“We registered at the same time, when we were 18,” she said.

They were among a crowd of voters who showed up at Gideon Missionary Baptist Church, 3085 S. Campbell Ave., late Tuesday afternoon as the sun started sinking toward the Discount Tire shop across the street.

Four volunteers with Election Protection Arizona, a nonpartisan voter aid group, were camped out under a sun shade in the gravel parking lot. They insisted she must be able to vote.

They punched her information into a tablet computer and sought answers on a cellphone before finally Mark Lennox and Mike Chamblee arrived.

The two men were helping out as troubleshooters for Pima County Elections.

Between volunteers’ help and the troubleshooters, Fierro was able to head to the front of the line and cast her ballot. She walked back to her car with a smile and an “I voted” sticker.

Smooth voting

In-person voter turnout largely met heightened expectations on Election Day, Tucson poll workers say.

A small sample of the city’s polling officials said they were able to meet the task of serving more voters in a federal election year.

Most, if not all, saw an early-morning rush of voters ready to cast ballots first.

“Everything’s gone very smooth,” said Sam Brush, an elections inspector at the Morris K. Udall Recreation Center, who was also expecting more of a rush in the evening hours before closing.

“I think this has been a lot more than we expected. I think we’ll probably get a rush maybe at 5:30 or 6 o’clock, when people get off work and come in late. But I don’t know, the way it’s been going, I just didn’t expect what we’ve had.”

By early afternoon, Brush said they had served at least 350 voters, an additional 80 provisional ballots issued and around the same amount, if not more, ballots dropped off by voters.

Laith Lashawwa, one of the afternoon voters at Udall, said the process took less time than in 2016.

“It went very, very smoothly. I think I was in there for a total of five minutes. Everyone was nice and polite, no one was being toxic, which is good,” Lashawwa said.

He said he chose to vote in person to make sure his ballot was received by election officials.

“I know this year compared to the prior election, there’s a lot more people voting early, ahead of time, which is good for them,” Lashawwa said. “Obviously one vote doesn’t make a huge or biggest difference, but I wanted to make sure that mine did not somehow get lost or this or that. So I wanted to come in, regardless if it was busy or not.”

First-time triumph

Rachel Behrens and her husband, Andrew, took their 18-year-old son, Joseph, to the polls early Tuesday morning to vote in his first election, she said.

There was a little traffic at 6:30 a.m. but no lines at their polling site at Desert Son Community Church on Cortaro Farms Road east of I-10.

Behrens said the poll worker who checked in her son got excited when she found out he was about to cast his first ballot.

“She called out, ‘We have a first-time voter here!’ ” Behrens said, and the other poll workers responded with cheers and applause.

The senior at Mountain View High School thought it was “pretty cool” to be recognized like that, his mom said.

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“He had his mask on. I’m assuming he was smiling,” Behrens said. “He said he’s glad to be a part of this process. He fully believes he can make a difference with his vote.”

First-time trouble

Francisco Benavidez had a tough time casting his first-ever ballot at Gideon Missionary Baptist. And the timing was bad — he had just finished an exhausting dialysis session.

The poll inspector told him he couldn’t vote because of the address on his voter card, Benavidez said.

So he went back outside and was stopped by the Election Protection volunteers. They insisted he should vote a provisional ballot.

A back-and-forth with the inspector coming outside and insisting Benavidez should go to Vail, the address on his voter ID card, though he lives now near this south-side Tucson polling station.

The inspector even told Benavidez he was wasting the election officials’ time, a video of the conversation showed.

“He was very, very rude,” Benavidez said.

Theresa Riel and other volunteers insisted he should be allowed to cast a provisional ballot. And eventually, with the help of troubleshooter Maddox, he was allowed to.

“I thought they were more knowledgeable than the people inside the polling place,” Benavidez said, adding they were “very sweet and very helpful.”

“No issues reported”

Norma Castaleda, an inspector at the Pima Community College’s East Campus polling site, said poll workers arrived to see about 20 people waiting outside when they opened their doors.

“At 6 in the morning when we opened, we had a big line, and it’s just been busy, busy, busy,” Castaleda said, “but we’ve been doing pretty good; we took care of them.”

Castaleda, who has served on election for six years, added, “People have been nice, too; they haven’t been rude or anything.”

The polling site was also expecting a surge of voters as the closing of polls drew near.

Tucson police officers were seen patrolling near polling sites, according to Officer Frank Magos, a police spokesman.

Magos said there were “no issues reported to us so far,” as of 5 p.m., two hours before the polls were to close.

Magos added that some officers had been assigned to respond only to Election Day problems as final votes are casts by 7 p.m. However, those officers were not stationed at any city polling sites.

Rushing Back to Maricopa County

Rusty Graves pulled his tractor trailer up to the Gideon Missionary Baptist Church and asked if he could vote there. He lives in Maricopa County, he explained, but he had driven to Tucson today.

His daughter Anjali, 12, was with him.

Volunteers told Graves he had to make it back to Maricopa County, but that he could vote at any voting center there. He pulled out of the gravel lot, found a place to turn the truck around, then headed toward I-10.

The southernmost polling place he could find in the county was at Sun Lakes. Rusty and Anjali Graves pulled into a truck stop there about 6:15 p.m., detached the trailer and drove on to the polling place a couple of miles away, where the parking lot was small.

At about 6:40 p.m., he texted a picture with the message “We made it. I was able to vote.”