Pima County mailed sample ballots with a date error. This is how the elections department is fixing it.

Elections department officials are reaching out to Pima County voters who received a sample ballot mailer with the wrong date for Arizona’s primary election. As local and state elections officials continue to combat mistrust and false claims about election fraud in Arizona, community members at Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting cited the mistake among several complaints and conspiracies.

The date error occurred on a sample ballot information packet mailed out earlier this month by the Pima County Elections Department. The correct date for the primary election day is July 30.

Pima County Elections Director Constance Hargrove told Arizona Luminaria they are fixing the mistake.

“That absolutely was an error. It was not intentional,” she said.

The county has already issued a correction on the election department’s website : “Sample ballots for the July 30 primary election in Pima County mailed to registered voters last week contained the wrong election date in the heading of the vote center list.”

Hargrove said that every household that received the sample ballot should receive, in the next day or so, a postcard with the correct primary date.

The public concern comes amid lingering distrust in the integrity of elections across the state and country. Elections officials have experienced that distrust through threats and intimidation, leading many to quit their jobs in Arizona and across the country.

Over the past several years, Arizona has been at the center of former President Donald Trump’s and his supporters’ efforts to discredit America’s election voting systems. In 2020, conservatives who complained of fraud and aimed to overturn legitimate election results pushed for an audit and hand-count of presidential election ballots.

Multiple audits, and even audits of the audit , have consistently shown that there was no concerted or widespread fraud in Arizona . Even staunch supporters of the Republican party have dismissed the specious claims of wrongdoing. Polling after the 2022 elections also found that a majority of Arizonans trusted the results.

Arizona voters navigating new election rules

Earlier this year, state lawmakers moved up the date of the primary election , among other voting changes, to give election officials more time to certify results. The change came after a 2022 Republican-backed measure to tighten the threshold for automatic recounts, which has since spurred more recounts and extended the period for verifying elections.

Elections officials in Pima County and across Arizona are preparing for increased scrutiny and possible contention of 2024 election results. Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly opened the recorder’s office to public information sessions and the elections department has held media days and civic academies and sent out informational emails. Still, voting experts expect the spotlight to remain on elections officials in Arizona as candidates court voters in the swing state that could be decisive in the 2024 general election.

Democrat Rex Scott, supervisor from District 1, told Arizona Luminaria there is “no reason to doubt” the integrity of the 2022 elections.

Republican Steve Christy, supervisor from District 4, responding to the public concerns about 2022, requested that the issue be put on the agenda for the next board of supervisors meeting. Christy also requested that the Pima County recorder and elections director be present at the meeting to answer questions. The next board of supervisors meeting is Aug. 13.

Both Scott and Christy agreed there is value in the recorder and the election director coming to the next board of supervisors meeting to personally address public concerns.

“Sharing information is always helpful,” Scott said, reiterating that he has no concerns about the 2022 election.

“At the very least let’s discuss,” Christy said. “If the claims are false, we can put them to bed. A good open discussion is the best disinfectant for conspiracy theories.”

After the drawn-out disputes about the 2020 and 2022 elections, multiple Arizona officials have been working to combat possible issues and ensure confidence in the voting process.

During the call to the public for comment, community members’ complaints about the 2022 election included allegations of ballots turned in late, inconsistencies in following chain of custody laws for ballots and of a ballot being mailed to someone who would have been 122 years old.

About 10 community members also decried irregularities in the handling of ballots in the 2022 midterm elections. Dave Smith, Pima County GOP chairman, told the supervisors, “We have lost faith in the election process.”

Tim Laux said to the county supervisors that they were “officially put on notice.” Another community member said the upcoming primary election is “uncertain and uncertifiable.”

Laux told Arizona Luminaria he’s part of a group of concerned citizens helping the Pima County GOP find duplicate addresses in voter registration roles. “We’ve been looking at all the data,” he said, and finding “all these anomalies.”

Thomas Collins is the executive director of the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission , a voter-mandated five-person commission that “seeks to improve the integrity of Arizona state government and promote public confidence in the Arizona political process.”

“These kinds of errors do not affect actual results of any elections,” he said. “Clerical errors will also rarely change the outcome of any legal proceedings because our laws recognize that these errors do not go to the underlying merits of a case.”

Collins also said that courts have “rightly rejected efforts to add up token irrelevancies to create some kind of issue.”

“The effort to amplify these kinds of things into a suspicion of election fraud are not helpful to anyone’s cause,” Collins said.

Hargrove, director of the county’s election department, is seeking to assure Pima County voters that they can trust the process.

“We are doing everything in our power that the chain of custody is secure and everything we can to ensure safe, fair and accurate elections,” Hargrove said.

The post Pima County mailed sample ballots with a date error. This is how the elections department is fixing it. appeared first on AZ Luminaria .