Arizona court rejects bid to extend vote-processing deadline

Arizonans whose signatures on early ballots are questioned won’t get more time to fix the problem and ensure their votes are counted.

In a brief order late Sunday, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected claims by the American Civil Liberties of Arizona that the deadline — which came at 5 p.m. Sunday — did not provide enough time for voters to be notified of the problem and contact county election officials.

Justice William Montgomery, writing for the court, said Arizona law requires only that counties make “reasonable efforts’’ to contact voters whose ballots are being questioned. He said there was no evidence counties have not complied, meaning there was no evidence voters were prevented from “curing” their ballots by the Sunday deadline.

“In short, there is no evidence of disenfranchisement before the court,’’ Montgomery wrote.

The ruling is a victory for the Arizona Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, which urged the court to reject extending the deadline.

The ACLU’s Arizona chapter filed the lawsuit Saturday on behalf of itself and the League of United Latin American Citizens-Arizona. The groups noted that election officials in several counties are running behind in efforts to process all of the more than 3 million ballots received.

That processing means comparing the voters’ signatures on early ballot envelopes with other examples of their signatures on file. But that is still a work in progress. ACLU says the counties have not notified all of those voters that there is a problem.

The challengers wanted the high court to require that affected voters would get at least 48 hours after a notice is hand-delivered to them or they are notified by overnight mail to cure the problem. That often can be done by a phone call to county offices assuring election officials they are, in fact, the ones who signed the ballots. If the notice was conveyed to affected voters by other methods, the ACLU and LULAC wanted the deadline to be postponed by 96 hours.

How many are affected remains unclear. The latest figures Sunday from the Secretary of State’s Office showed there were about 68,000 ballots that had yet to be processed.

But that figure includes not just ballots waiting for a signature to be cured but also those that have not yet had their signatures verified. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer’s attorneys told the justices that all voters in the most populous county needing their signatures cured had been notified at least by text no later than Saturday.

The Republican Party pointed out in a legal filing Sunday that state lawmakers just this year set a hard-and-fast deadline of five days after the election for voters whose signatures were questioned to “cure’’ the problem of an apparent mismatch. After that, according to Arizona law, any remaining “uncured’’ ballots are not opened.

Attorney David Rothschild, representing the Republican National Committee and the Arizona Republican Party, told the justices that the petition by the American Civil Liberties of Arizona to extend that deadline asked them at the last minute to substitute their judgment for that of a majority of state lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who signed the legislation.

The court’s decision could prove crucial.

Part of the reason some races have not been called is that, as of Sunday afternoon, an estimated 390,000 ballots had not been counted. That process continues in some counties for a few more days.

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The figure includes the 68,000 not yet processed, much less counted — including uncured ballots that now won’t be counted. That could make the difference in some particularly close races.

The latest figures showed Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani was running only about 1,200 votes ahead of Democratic challenger Kirsten Engle in his race for reelection in Congressional District 6, which includes part of the Tucson area and spreads into four other counties.

Several legislative races also were on the bubble, including the state Senate contest in Tucson-area Legislative District 17, where Republican Vince Leach led Democrat John McLean by 300 votes.

But uncured ballots are unlikely to make a difference in the race for U.S. Senate, where Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego had widened his lead over Republican Kari Lake by nearly 54,000 as of Sunday afternoon.

Arizona lawmakers approved no-excuse early voting in 1991. The process has proved popular, with upwards of 80% of all ballots now cast that way. But in asking the justices to reject the ACLU petition, Rothschild pointed out there is nothing that guarantees people get to vote by mail.

“Voting absentee is a privilege and a convenience for those unable to vote in person, not a right,’’ he said. “There is no right to cure an otherwise invalid ballot indefinitely, and no legal or equitable authority extends the time for curing ballots beyond the period authorized by the Legislature.’’

That points to the fact that until this election, voters were given five business days to cure their ballots. That would have meant through Tuesday, Nov. 12.

The GOP-led Arizona Legislature voted in February for a series of changes in deadlines — including shortening the cure period to five calendar days and Hobbs signed the bill.

Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cazares-Kelly, a Democrat, said she was not opposed to extending the deadline.

Cazares-Kelly had opposed shortening the cure deadline to five calendar days “and specifically expressed concerns about the last day of the cure deadline falling on a Sunday, when less people are likely to have access to phone or internet services,” said Deputy Pima County Attorney Daniel Jurkowitz, who filed a legal brief on her behalf.

Jurkowitz told the court that, as of Saturday evening, Pima County still had 2,143 unresolved ballots. He said though, that every voter who had listed a phone number on their ballot envelope had been called at least once, with 1,877 of them having received multiple messages, whether electronically or by mail.

The Navajo Nation also asked the court to grant the ACLU request.