PHOENIX — Voter rights groups petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court on Saturday to extend the deadline for voters to resolve problems with mail-in ballots due to delays in counting ballots and notify voters of problems.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Campaign Legal Center asked the state Supreme Court in an emergency petition to extend the original 5 p.m. Sunday deadline to four days after a voter is notified of a problem.
The groups argued in the petition that “tens of thousands of Arizonans will be disenfranchised without any warning, let alone action to ensure their votes are counted.”
“Since these ballots have not even been processed, the respondents have not identified which ballots are defective and have not notified the voters of the need to correct these defects,” the petition said.
Arizona law says that people who vote by mail must be notified of problems with their ballots, such as a signature that doesn’t match what’s on file, and have an opportunity to correct them in a process called “cure.”
The groups’ petition said more than 250,000 mail-in ballots had not been verified by signature as of Friday afternoon. Most of them were in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa County.
As of Saturday, 200,000 ballots remained to be processed, according to estimates on the Arizona Secretary of State’s website.
Taylor Kinnerup, a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, said it prides itself on conducting “accurate and timely” signature verification, and that all general election signatures went through the process by the end of Friday, “allowing voters who questioned signatures to heal their signatures.” a long time.”
“As an administrative agency, our office is bound by the letter of the law, which requires a voter’s signature to be cured within five calendar days of the election,” Kinnerup said. “Voters are contacted directly if they question their signature, but they can also choose to see if their ballot needs to be cured online at BeBallotReady.Vote.”
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Gabriel Sandoval is a member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for the Americas It is a national non-profit service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on the issues they cover.
