More than 1 million Maricopa County voters eligible to participate this fall in city council, school board and other local elections are about to experience big changes in how they cast their ballots.

The most noticeable changes:

Every voter will receive a mail-in ballot, not just people on the early voting list.

Traditional polling places will go away. Voters who have lost or spoiled their mail-in ballots, or who prefer to vote in person, will be able to visit any one of dozens of "ballot centers," giving them more location options than before.

Voters checking in at a ballot center will use a computer kiosk to scan their ID or enter personally identifiable information to receive a ballot, instead of handing the ID to a poll worker. Then a ballot will be printed for them.

There will be fewer ballot centers than the current number of polling places, but the ballot centers will have more check-in lines, equipment and staffing, and more locations will be open more days before the election for early voting than previously.

Yavapai, Yuma, Cochise, Graham and Santa Cruz counties use a generally similar process.

The new system makes it easier for voters to participate, lessens wait times and cuts costs, according to Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes. He is holding demonstrations of the system across the Valley and speaking to community groups to get the word out.

"This really is the next step in modernizing our election system, and I think that's something everybody across the board wants to see," Fontes said. "We're enhancing the voter experience. We're opening up more access to the ballot box. We're making it easier for U.S. citizens to vote. We're not sacrificing anything when it comes to security or identity."

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'This is how America does it'

But some voters have voiced confusion and concern, questioning the security and necessity of the changes.

GOP activists recently grilled Fontes, a Democrat, in a testy meeting of Legislative District 23.

One man said he did not want to vote by mail.

"I take my grandkids (to the polling place). This is how America does it. (Mail voting is) like mailing a bill or mailing a flier. I don't want that. I want to go to a polling place and hit a button. This is my privilege," he told Fontes, according to a video of the May 11 meeting. "I hope you consider the future of the people of this country and never take a polling place away from them."

Fontes reassured the voter that he could still cast a ballot in person. But the incident underlined the communication challenge election staffers have encountered explaining their goal of sending ballots to all voters and switching traditional polling places to ballot centers.

"You want to go to a ballot center and walk in with your grandkids and get that sticker? You can. We are not taking away in-person voting under the vote-by-mail system," Fontes told the man. "All we're doing is expanding the availability of elections."

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Confusion continues

Other Republicans said they left the Scottsdale meeting skeptical.

"I felt like for everything he said, at the end of the sentence it left you with more questions than answers," said Lisa James, a GOP political consultant who attended.

An email blast to Valley conservatives, based on messaging from the Recorder's Office, added to the confusion.

"New County Recorder Adrian Fontes plans to do away with ID at the polls," Republican Legislative District 4 precinct committeeman Richard Hopkins warned in a widely read newsletter last month. "Promotional material he has sent out indicates the goal is to do away with ID at the polls. Suggest that your county supervisor be contacted and urged not to fund this."

At least one activist followed through in an email to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

Hopkins, a Buckeye school-board member, was partially right.

He received a Recorder's Office handout from a ballot center demo that said: "Vote-by-Mail removes 'ID at the polls' requirement (Signature is your proof of identity)."

But that statement is not exactly right. Voters still must provide identification at the ballot center. The difference: A computer will do the checking, not a poll worker.

Like a grocery self-checkout, voters wave their driver's license or voter-registration card under a laser and the computer brings up their identity and prints a ballot.



If voters forget or do not have a driver's license or voter ID, they can enter their name, birth date, address and Social Security or voter-registration number to check in. This would work for voters who typically use a tribal ID or a combination of two non-photo forms of ID such as a utility bill and vehicle registration to vote. Failing that, voters can submit the usual provisional ballot, which undergoes additional scrutiny.

Hopkins and others still worry that an impostor could vote with a stolen ID if a poll worker does not compare the photo ID to the face of the person requesting the ballot. Yuma and Cochise counties, which use similar ballot centers, require a poll worker to take ID, officials told The Arizona Republic.

"Let's take this to an absurd level. I believe you agree that Vladimir Putin should not vote in the United States. Agreed? How do I know that if I don't take his ID?" an attendee at the LD23 meeting asked Fontes, drawing loud applause.

Fontes did not clearly answer at the meeting. But he later explained that an impostor would have to steal an ID, go to the ballot center before the voter has cast a ballot (otherwise the impostor's ballot would not count) and forge a signature.

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Is the new system more secure?

In the new system, all ballot envelopes — whether mailed or submitted at a ballot center — will go through signature verification. Currently, only mail-in ballots, which in some elections make up as much as 97 percent of the votes cast, require signature verification but do not require photo ID.

"We've never gone to someone's living room under the vote-by-mail system and asked them to show us an ID in their living room," Fontes said. "So the security systems that already exist under the current (early-vote system) will exist under our ballot-by-mail system."

"We actually think it's more secure" because trained election workers review signatures, instead of a volunteer poll worker who checks an ID, Chief Deputy Recorder Keely Varvel said.

The Recorder's Office is also considering requiring voters at the ballot centers to key in their Social Security number along with scanning their ID.

However, there could be another security concern in the new plan: When a voter checks in and the computer prints the ballot, a poll worker hands the ballot to the voter.

When ballot centers aren't busy, it may be easy for poll workers to know which ballot should be given to which voter. But when there are crowds, that could become difficult.

Yuma and Cochise counties require poll workers, before handing a newly printed ballot over, to check receipts that voters receive upon check-in.

Fontes: System is efficient, innovative

Election officials are talking about the new plan with community members now, so there is plenty of time to iron out problems before November, Fontes said. And with ballot centers open longer before Election Day than early polling places were in previous elections, there will be more opportunities to troubleshoot, he added.

If all goes well, Fontes hopes to replicate the new system in all elections in Maricopa County, not just local ones, in 2018.

But he'll have to convince the Arizona Legislature and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to sign off on the plan. State Sen. Bob Worsley, R-Mesa, introduced a bill this year, but it did not advance.

Fontes touts arguments about government efficiency and innovation that conservatives in those political bodies may warm to.

He cites millions of dollars in potential savings because he can use new, less-expensive technology, can open fewer ballot-center locations and won't have to print more in-person ballots than necessary.

The new all-mail system is another step in the major overhaul of the election office Fontes promised when he campaigned last year against longtime Recorder Helen Purcell, whose failed experiment with a new voting system during the presidential-preference election led to long wait times and angry voters.

Ironically, the ballot centers that Fontes plans to use this year are similar to what Purcell tried in the March 2016 election. But he insists with a big boost in equipment, staffing and locations, and better education for voters ahead of time, the new system will work smoothly.

"I actually think we're gonna have a hell of a lot of people standing around waiting for voters to show up," Fontes said.

And since voters can go to any ballot center, the plan should reduce the thousands of provisional ballots from voters that visit the wrong polling place that have slowed vote counts in past elections.

Even Hopkins, the Buckeye Republican, despite his concerns, generally supports the plan.

"To me it seems like it would be more cost effective and give people more opportunity to vote," he said. "I went in there (to the ballot center demonstration) with a closed mind that it's going to be terrible. And I came out thinking most of it was pretty good."

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