Delayed deadline sought to count many thousands of untallied Arizona votes

Two groups want the Arizona Supreme Court to give potentially tens of thousands of voters more time to deal with signature issues on their ballots to ensure their votes count and are not discarded after Sunday.

The American Civil Liberties Union noted that state law says any discrepancies between the signature on the early ballot envelope and the signature counties have on file must be resolved by 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 10. If not, the vote is not counted.

At last report, Arizona counties had yet to even process more than 195,000 of these early ballots.

Some may have no signature issues.

But for those that do — and there were thousands in each of the last two elections — at the rate the counties are going, by the time these voters are told their signatures don’t match it could be too late to do anything about it, effectively disenfranchising them, said Jared Keenan of Arizona’s ACLU chapter.

The challengers. also including the League of United Latin American Citizens-Arizona, want an order from the court to extend the deadline by 96 hours after a notice is finally sent out to affected voters. Given the rate at which counties are processing ballots, that could move the deadline to Friday, Nov. 15, Keenan said. The lawsuit says the deadline to respond can be 48 hours, instead, if the notice was sent by overnight mail or hand delivered.

The move to extend the deadline is getting a fight from Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, a Gilbert Republican.

“Follow the law,’’ he told Capitol Media Services on Saturday. “We all have to abide by the same rules.’’

Petersen said that ensures equal treatment for all candidates.

The Supreme Court justices will need to act no later than Sunday if there is to be relief. There was no immediate response Saturday from the court.

Central to the issue is the fact that upwards of 80% of Arizonans get an early ballot. That allows them to fill it out at home and drop it in the mail, often arriving as late as Election Day.

But that is complicated by the fact that many of those who get the ballots wait until Election Day to drop them off at polling places. This year that figure was more than 334,000, including 210,039 in Maricopa County and 105,442 in Pima County.

And counties can’t even begin to process these “late-early’’ ballots until they have tallied live votes cast by voters at polling places on Election Day.

Arizona law also requires early ballots to have a signature on the return envelope. That, in turn, requires election workers to compare what is on the envelope to other samples they have on file, whether from voter registration records or other documents.

ACLU attorneys point out that the law also requires county officials to make “reasonable efforts to contact the voter’’ any time a signature is deemed to be “inconsistent.’’

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The state Elections Procedures Manual, which has the force of law, says those efforts must be made “as soon as practicable’’ and include efforts to contact the voter via mail, phone, text message or email, depending on the contact information available.

That process, called “curing,’’ can often be done by phone, with the voter confirming that, signature issues aside, the ballot did come from him or her. County officials say there usually are explanations, ranging from a changing signature over time to age or infirmity.

But there also are times it might be necessary for someone to go to a county election office to make the fix.

That is not a problem when there is time, the lawsuit says.

In Maricopa County in 2020, the attorneys said, about 26,000 signatures were set aside for verification issues. About 24,000 were cured. For 2022, there were 15,500 cured ballots out of 18,500 that were marked as having problems.

“In other words, between 83% and 92% of ballots flagged for signature issues were cured when voters had the opportunity to do so,’’ the lawsuit says.

The problem here, the attorneys said, is the counties have not even begun this signature verification and curing process for the remaining ballots.

“And because of respondents’ delays, potentially thousands of Arizona voters will not receive reasonable notice of a perceived signature mismatch in time to cure the problem by Sunday at 5 p.m.,” lawsuit says.

The lawsuit filed Saturday acknowledges the late nature of the action. But the lawyers are telling the justices that quick intervention is both necessary and appropriate.

“Arizona law establishes a fundamental right to vote that would be abridged if voters were given no, or inadequate, opportunity to cure signature discrepancies on their ballots,’’ they told the court.

“With a significant number of early ballots yet to be processed, the counties may not learn of a potential error until the literal eleventh hour before the deadline to cure arises, or even after that deadline,’’ the lawyers wrote.

Consider, they said, a county learning of the problem on Sunday. “It would not send notice until hours before the 5 p.m. cure deadline,’’ the lawsuit states.

“Notice delivered via mail would not arrive in time for the voter to take action. Even notice delivered by email, text or phone call might not offer the voter enough time, as voters are unlikely to expect urgent messages on a Sunday afternoon and therefore might not be near their phones or computers.’’