Photo by Jim Small | Arizona Mirror
For the first time in nearly 20 years, Maricopa County voters will mark their choices on a two-page ballot in November.
On Wednesday, election officials in Arizona’s most populous county announced that voters can expect to receive two pages, whether they vote early by mail or on Election Day. The average ballot will carry 79 contests, including the race to become the 47th President of the United States, positions on local school boards and seats in the state legislature. The last time the Grand Canyon State ran a two-page ballot was in 2006, according to a news release issued by the county.
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Adrian Borunda, a spokesperson for Maricopa County Elections Department said that voters can do research ahead of time by visiting BeBallotReady.Vote , where the department expects to upload sample ballots in the next few weeks. And, he added, Arizonans can avail themselves of early voting or sign up for mailed ballots to skip Election Day wait times.
“Voter fatigue is a real thing, when a voter sees X amount of races,” Borunda said. “It’s obviously a lot easier to keep their attention and participation with fewer races but how we’re trying to combat that is obviously having all of our voting options available. We’re telling people to vote early, take your time. That’s easier to do when there isn’t as long a line.”
The last day to register to vote is Oct. 7, and the state’s early voting period begins just two days later. Voters can request to receive a mailed ballot until Oct. 25.
The presidential election is expected to spur high levels of voter turnout. Borunda said the county is prepared to deal with the increased participation and voters can trust that there won’t be a repeat of the 2022 midterms . During that election, Maricopa County came under fire after issues with on-site ballot printers at 70 polling places resulted in confusion and long wait times, when tabulators were unable to read some of the ballots. Voters were directed to either deposit their ballots in a special drawer, nicknamed Door #3, for later tabulation at the county’s election center or check-out of vote centers experiencing problems to cast their ballots at a different site.
Borunda said the county has since gotten rid of the defective printers and has rigorously tested current elections equipment to ensure it’s up to the task of printing and counting two-page ballots. Even if problems with on-site tabulators do arise, Borunda said, Door #3 will still be available as a fail-safe. Every vote will still be counted, he said.
But a two-page ballot will likely mean that tabulation and results will be slower, already a point of contention for Arizona voters and those who watch its races closely. Two-page ballots are also expected to cause issues in calculating voter turnout , since it is usually determined by the number of one-page ballots that are tabulated — and some voters will inevitably return only one page.
One of the main reasons for this year’s ballot length is the number of proposed statutory and state constitutional changes being put to voters, not just in Maricopa County, but across the state.
Republican lawmakers are responsible for 11 of them, having adopted a strategy of sending wish-list items to the ballot in a bid to circumvent a veto from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. That’s the largest number of legislative referrals since 1984, when lawmakers approved 13 . Among them are ballot measures that would preemptively outlaw ranked choice voting , give Arizona police officers and judges the power to jail and deport migrants , and grant state judges lifetime appointments . Citizen initiative campaigns succeeded in adding just two proposals to the ballot: one to enshrine abortion protections in the Arizona Constitution and another to establish open primaries. Votes for the latter, however, might not be counted. A trial court is still in the process of determining whether the campaign gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in the first place.
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