A good time for Southern Arizona voters to check registration card

There is a good reason why potentially thousands of registered voters in Pima County can’t trust the new registration card they got in the mail.

That’s because a mailing of roughly a half-million new voter registration cards last month included thousands showing out-of-date information. And they were mailed just as voters who had changed their party affiliation were also receiving their new card.

Officials concede it was poor timing to test of the county’s voter database in the weeks preceding the state’s Presidential Preference Election. They knew several thousand local voters had changed their party affiliation to participate in the Presidential Preference Election, which was not open to voters registered as an independent.

The state requires that the county recorder’s officer test the database every presidential election year.

The two nearly identical cards likely crossed in the mail. That’s because the county’s vendor needed several weeks to print and mail roughly 500,000 voter registration cards while simultaneously printing new cards for voters who made changes to their voter registration. The confusion could become an issue again.

With a month before the state votes on a controversial plan to fund K-12 education, Monday marks the deadline to register, or update, voter registration with the state.

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There’s less to worry about in the next month’s special election because unlike the Presidential Preference Election, it is open to any registered voter. And those on the county’s permanent early voter list don’t have to worry about polling locations.

However, with three different government agencies looking into why some voters were disenfranchised in Arizona’s Presidential Preference Election, and a lawsuit seeking to overturn it, the advice from elected officials is the same: every person concerned about their voter registration needs to confirm the information it contains.

To check your registration online, go to servicearizona.com and click on the Voter Registration box.

Voters also can call the County Recorder’s office at 724-4330.

Other options include completing forms at any of the following locations: any Pima County Recorder’s office; any Arizona Department of Motor Vehicle branch; all post offices and libraries; political party headquarters; and city/town hall.