Mary Jo Pitzl

The Republic | azcentral.com

Nearly 3.6 million voters, thousands of poll locations, and a testy electorate: What could go wrong?

Plenty, as voters discover every election cycle.

In Tuesday's election, there were reports of broken machines in Maricopa County, long lines in Bisbee and inadequate instruction from poll workers to voters.

Despite the legal fight over ballot collection, and a last-minute intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court, there were no reported claims of people returning handfuls of other voters' ballots to the polls. Likewise, reports of intimidation were few, with some concerns about people carrying guns outside polling sites or posing as "election-protection" officials.

The Arizona Advocacy Network said it got more than 2,000 reports of suspected voting irregularities from volunteers posted at polling places statewide. Many of those were remedied in the field, said executive director Sam Pstross. It will take time to sort through the reports to figure out if the group will suggest any policy changes, she said. The group is working with the national Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

A broken machine to start the day

Claudine Russeau said she waited 2 1/2 hours at her southeast Phoenix polling place for a functioning ballot-scanning machine to accept her ballot.

When she arrived 15 minutes after her poll opened Tuesday morning, Russeau said the machine was broken. Poll workers advised voters they could leave their completed ballots in a bin beneath the scanner, promising they would scan them once the machine was working.

That didn't appease Russeau. "I wasn't leaving until I got to scan my ballot," she said.

Elizabeth Bartholomew, a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, couldn't explain why the poll opened with broken equipment. Every machine is checked before it is sent out to the polls, and then checked again the night before Election Day, she said.

"It's not common for a machine to be working the night before and then not work the next day," she said. But, she added, "That's why we have spares."

In addition, reports from voters and poll observers cited voting delays at numerous polling places in Maricopa County due to problems with electronic poll books. The e-poll books contain data needed to verify a voter's identity, ensure they're at the proper precinct and even print out a ballot, if needed.

The books, which are tablet computers, would stall and crash. The delays were so bad that the state Democratic Party seized on the problem and rushed to court, seeking a two-hour extension of voting hours to compensate for the lost voting time. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge denied the emergency motion.

Voter confusion

Many Election Day complaints revolved around voters not being at the proper poll, or lacking the required identification to vote.

Arusha Gordon, an attorney with the Lawyers' Committee, said they got reports of poll workers providing inadequate instruction to voters on issues such as ID.

Laura Reicher, a poll inspector in Tempe, said the biggest problem she saw was people who had moved and changed their driver's-license address, but had not updated their address for voter registration. When they show up at the polls, there's a mismatch between the ID and the information that poll workers have.

Those voters can cast a provisional ballot, which many did, but that slows down work at the polls, she said. While it can take as little as 30 seconds to check in a voter with the proper ID, Reicher said, the paperwork for provisionals can last five minutes.

The change-of-address form at the Motor Vehicle Division has a box that people can check to update their voter registration. But Reicher said she thinks many polling-place headaches could be avoided if the option was more prominently displayed.

C.J. Carenza, a poll inspector for several years, said he's seen the same problem that Reicher identified.

But, he said, the majority of the problems at the central-Phoenix polling site he helped staff were due to what he called the "every four-year voter."

Rules, and polling locations, change frequently, he said. Voters who only come out for the presidential election might not be up to speed on the changes, he said.

Some voters went to any polling place, rather than their assigned poll, to cast their ballot, Carenza said. He and his staff directed voters to the proper poll that matched their voter registration, he said.

Hours-long waits in Bisbee

Cochise County in southeastern Arizona had long lines at its three major population centers: Sierra Vista, Bisbee and Douglas. Much of that was due to that county's switch from precinct-based polls, where a voter must go to the location assigned to his or her address, to vote centers, which accept voters no matter where they live in the county.

The change resulted in fewer voting locations: 18, down from the customary 64. And for many voters in the rural county, it required a longer drive than a trip to their local poll.

Thursday: More than 400,000 votes left to count in Arizona; final total to come next week

In Bisbee, more than 100 cars lined up at the town’s only vote center, and waits were estimated at two hours, at least.

County elections Director Katie Howard said the center in Douglasran low on ballot forms. They had to send for reinforcements from Pima County.

But it apparently wasn't enough: As the 7 p.m. closing time neared, more than 300 people were still in line, waiting for more ballots to arrive so they could vote, according to The Arizona Daily Star. Howard did not return a call seeking comment.

Long waits for final counts

With the voting done, many voter complaints turned to how long it takes to get the final tally.

The day after the election, officials reported a total of 627,725 ballots statewide still needed to be counted, along with thousands of provisional ballots that had to be examined to see if they should be counted.

The early ballots were the ones that were not tabulated before Election Night, as well as the thousands of early ballots that voters walked into polls on Tuesday. State law prevents election workers from beginning to process early ballots until the ballot machines pass the mandatory "logic and accuracy test" run by the Arizona Secretary of State's Office. Those tests are typically done in the two weeks preceding an election.

In Maricopa County, the uncounted tally was 415,000 early ballots plus 55,000 provisional ballots. Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell's office estimates it will take until Wednesday or Thursday before everything is wrapped up, and that's with staffers and volunteers working through the Veterans Day holiday and the weekend.

Election glitch prevented vote counting for hours in Surprise, Wickenburg

It takes time, elections officials say, to open more than a half-million envelopes and begin processing them. Provisional verification takes even longer.

And it could be worse: In 2012, the last presidential-election year, Maricopa County had 122,000 provisional ballots, Recorder's Office spokeswoman Bartholomew said. Thanks to the advent of electronic poll books, poll workers can tell if a voter was mailed an early ballot but didn't return it, avoiding the need to make the voter cast a provisional ballot. Instead, poll workers can print a ballot for that voter and allow him or her to vote on site, she said.

Meanwhile, anxious voters such as Jude Clark are using elections websites to check the status of their early ballots. Many were alarmed when the response told them their ballot was being sent for "signature verification," triggering fears their signatures were deemed illegible and they would not meet the 7 p.m. Election Day deadline to remedy the situation.

Bartholomew said the response does not mean the signature is problematic, just that it needs to be checked against the registration rolls. It's standard for every early ballot, she said. She urged voters to check later in the week for updates. However, if at this point a ballot signature is considered illegible, there is no opportunity for voters to correct it, she said.

ELECTION RESULTS: Vote tallies from top Arizona races, including Maricopa County

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