Rebekah L. Sanders

The Republic | azcentral.com

Voters across Arizona might have lost their party affiliation and been forced to cast provisional ballots in Tuesday's presidential preference election because of errors at the state Motor Vehicle Division, according to election officials.

A widespread complaint during Tuesday's voting debacle came from voters who learned records showed they were not registered with a party and therefore were ineligible to vote in the closed primary. Many of these voters, from both the Democratic and Republican parties, claimed decades of party participation.

Some of these voters might have lost their political-party registration when they updated their addresses in person at Motor Vehicle Services, officials said Friday.

"It might have been a clerical error putting that voter in 'party not designated,'" said Elizabeth Bartholomew, communications manager for the Maricopa County Recorder's Office Elections Department.

County election staffers are now sorting through roughly 18,000 provisional ballots cast by voters registered without party affiliation, said Bartholomew

Many provisional ballots were cast by independents who did not realize that only registered Democrats, Republicans or Green Party members can vote in the Arizona presidential-preference election, she said. Others came from independents who failed to change their party affiliation before the Feb. 22 deadline.

A smaller group, however, may have mistakenly lost their party affiliation at the MVD if they did not select a party on paper forms used to update addresses, Bartholomew said.

Voters may have thought they were updating an address and so did not need to choose a party. By not choosing a party, MVD clerks might have marked them without one.

Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan's office did not provide additional information Friday. She will announce preliminary findings from a review of election issues Monday, but the MVD problem will not be included, spokesman Matt Roberts said in an email.

"We're aware of the issue and while we've made progress, we are continuing our investigation. We'll have more information at some point soon," he said.

It is not known if the problem occurred at one MVD site or multiple or if it was isolated to Maricopa County. However it may be a statewide problem, according to complaints reported in Pinal and Pima counties and an interview with a former election official.

Also, it is not known how long the problem existed or how many voters were affected. The problem appears to have affected both Democrats and Republicans and to have gone back years.

Bartholomew did not yet know how the county would deal with the problem. Would the county count provisional ballots from all voters whose party affiliations were changed to "party not designated" after visiting an MVD site? Would the county notify voters to ask if they were incorrectly registered without a party designation?

"We're trying to solve this problem and work together" with the Secretary of State's Office and Arizona Department of Transportation, which administers voter registration at MVD sites, Bartholomew said.

"People are going to come out of the woodwork and say, 'That's me,'" she said.

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Former Secretary of State Ken Bennett said he did not hear of widespread issues with registration when he served from 2009 to 2014. But Bennett said he was told Friday by a technician who worked on the election system before him that the problem was identified in 2007 and had gone on for two years. Jan Brewer was secretary of state then, before she became governor.

MVD clerks were told at the time to stop noting a voter as "party not designated" if the voter failed to check a party box, Bennett said he was told. Instead, clerks were instructed to leave the registration field blank. If that voter was already registered in the county, the party registration would remain the same.

However, if the voter was new to the county, either after moving from another county or another state, the blank designation would automatically add the voter as "party not designated" because the voter would not have a party registration on file with that county, Bennett said he was told.

That means that since at least 2005, voters across Arizona who were registered with a party in another county and did not check a party box as they updated their address at the MVD could have lost their party registration.

ADOT confirmed part of the process that Bennett described.

"If a customer submitting a paper form doesn't note a party preference, MVD procedures call for customer-service representatives to note that the field was left blank," ADOT spokesman Steve Elliott said in an email. "That information is reported to the Secretary of State's Office."

He noted that people are given receipts of their voter registration when they update information online or at an MVD office as a way to ensure accuracy.

ADOT officials plan to work through the weekend to review the voter-registration process and coordinate with state and county election agencies, Elliott said.

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The glitch may have affected Apache Junction resident Gloria Bennett, 69, who said she is a lifelong Democrat who volunteered for then-U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz.

When the retired beautician and her husband moved in 2011 from Mesa in Maricopa County to Apache Junction in Pinal County, Bennett (who is not related to the former secretary of state) said she visited an MVD office to update her address.

She doesn't recall being asked to check a party box and assumed she was still a Democrat on the early voting list.

Bennett says she realized she hadn't received a ballot in the mail the week before Tuesday's election. So she called the Pinal elections office, where officials told her she was not registered with a party and could not vote.

"I said, this is (expletive)," Bennett said, adding, "I'm a real, proud Democrat."

Officials eventually determined she had lost her party registration after visiting the MVD and changed her registration back to Democrat so she could vote this week. She said Pinal officials told her they had fixed the MVD issue in 2013.

After learning of the problem Friday, former Secretary of State Bennett said it would be helpful if there was a clearer explanation on the MVD form that voters must check a party box if they intend to remain registered with a party.

However, he said, voters also bear responsibility to fill out forms completely.

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Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Mary Jo Pitzl contributed to this story.