PHOENIX — Sure, you turned in your early ballot before or even on Election Day.
But don’t be surprised if you get a call about it in the next few days.
No, it’s not a scam — presumably.
It is more likely someone from the county recorder’s office. Or maybe even one of the political parties.
What they’re likely asking is if you are actually the one who signed the envelope. And if you are but they can’t match the signatures you have only until 5 p.m. this coming Tuesday to fix the problem.
All this is related to the fact that county election workers are required to compare the signature on the envelope to what they have on file, usually from prior elections. And if it doesn’t match, they can’t count it unless it gets verified.
County election workers already have been making calls to voters — when the voter has included a phone number to call — in a bid to figure out whether the signatures match. That will continue through Tuesday.
But in a deal to end litigation, beginning Friday the recorders from Maricopa and Pima counties will also be giving the list of ballots with mismatched signatures to the political parties. And they will try to find the people who signed the ballots and get them to call county offices to verify their signatures and explain why they may not match what’s on file.
Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes said there’s no single “why” behind changing signatures. But he said a lot of it is age-related.
“Let’s be honest,” he said.
“When you’re an 18-year-old, you don’t have the same signature that you’ll have even when you’re 26 or 27 years old, depending on what you do for a living, how many times you sign your name, things of this nature,” Fontes said. “People’s signatures change.”
The same is true, he said, among older voters, whether it’s an injury, a disease or just a change in muscle control.
And Fontes said that county recorders err on the side of verifying the signature when at all possible.
What can help, he explained, is that his office — and every other recorder in Arizona — has a series of signatures to check to see how someone’s signature might have changed.
So, for example, a signature made on a ballot envelope five or six elections ago might look nothing like the one just submitted. But having a series of signatures over that period, Fontes said, can make all the difference.
“We have those five or six iterations of your signature that we can see the development of your signature,” he said. That shows how someone’s muscles and letter structure changes over time.
“So signature No. 7 might not look like signature No. 1,” Fontes said. “But if we see that progression and can say, ‘That’s just the natural progression of what this person goes through,’ then off we go and we’re going to validate that signature.”
And it’s not just signatures from prior elections that are available.
“I’m the county recorder,” he said. “I have tons and tons of data and a lot of signatures from a lot of different people that get indexed.”
Think mortgages and property transfer documents.
The actual process, Fontes said, involves two separate workers, not conferring with each other, who review ballot envelope signatures and, independently, determine if they don’t match records what’s on file. And all of them that are kicked out, he said, are put into a batch which is audited.
“We work with the notion of getting the signature validated, not excluding the signature,” he said.
That is what leads to those phone calls.
County recorders have been working since the early ballots began arriving to verify signatures.
“If the voter has given us their phone number, we’ll call them,” Fontes said, asking a series of identification questions to determine that the person who is on the line is, in fact, the person who sent the ballot. Then the question is whether that signature is theirs.
“And then we will ask them ‘Is there a reason your signature might not be matching?’” he continued. And if it’s validated, “then off we go.”
But here’s the thing: Not every ballot with a mismatched signature can be checked by Election Day, especially those that arrive at the last minute in the mail.
Fontes said his staff will continue its identification efforts and phone calls.
Then, at 9 a.m. on Friday, he will make the list of ballots with mismatched signatures available to the political parties to see if they have any better luck tracking down the voters and getting them to call the recorder’s office.
The Arizona Democratic Party actually had sued Fontes last month demanding an immediately updated daily list. But Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott McCoy said the party is not entitled to it — particularly while local officials are busy trying to administer the election.
But Fontes did agree to allow the party to help beginning Friday. And the same materials will be made available to the Republicans.
That’s also what’s going to happen in Pima County where Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez also was sued by the Democrats. But in the wake of McCoy’s ruling in the Fontes case, the Dems agreed to an out-of-court settlement giving them access to a list starting Friday.
Deputy Pima County Attorney David Jurkowitz said the state GOP also will be provided with names as it had made a public-records request.
