World Courant
PHOENIX — Voter rights teams on Saturday petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court docket to increase the deadline for voters to repair issues with their mail-in ballots after delays in counting votes and notifying voters of issues.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Marketing campaign Authorized Middle requested the state Supreme Court docket in an emergency petition to increase the unique 5 p.m. Sunday deadline till 4 days after a voter is notified of an issue.
The teams argued within the petition that “tens of hundreds of Arizonans might be disenfranchised with none discover, not to mention the chance to take motion to make sure their ballots are counted.”
“As a result of these ballots haven’t but even been processed, respondents haven’t recognized which ballots are faulty and did not notify voters of the necessity to right these defects,” the petition stated.
Arizona regulation says individuals who vote by mail have to be notified of issues with their poll, akin to a signature that does not match the signature on file, and given the chance to right them in a course of referred to as is named ‘curing’.
The teams’ petition famous that greater than 250,000 ballots had not but been verified by signature as of Friday night. The majority of them had been in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa County.
Slightly below 200,000 early ballots remained to be processed as of Saturday, in keeping with estimates on the Arizona Secretary of State’s Workplace web site.
Taylor Kinnerup, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Workplace, stated it prides itself on conducting “correct and well timed” signature verification, and that every one signatures for the final election went via the method by the top of the day Friday, “enabling the voters questioned signatures with ample time to get well their signatures.”
“As an administrative company, our workplace is certain by the letter of the regulation, which supplies a voter as much as 5 calendar days after an election to reinstate his or her signature,” Kinnerup stated. “Voters might be contacted instantly if their signature is questioned, however can even select to test on-line to see if their poll must be corrected at BeBallotReady.Vote.”
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Gabriel Sandoval is a workers member for the Related Press/Report for America Statehouse Information Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms to report on undercovered points.
