Obviously, Arizona and particularly Maricopa County have been trailblazers in early and mail-in ballots. The emergence of mail-in voting has been a factor in greater voter turnout here and throughout the country. While many people lament the decline in the tradition of voting at neighborhood polling stations, we have to concede that in fast-paced 21st-century America, the appearance of mail-in ballots distributed early has made voting much more convenient for busy citizens.
And, when voters mail back their ballots in a timely manner, these are the first to be tabulated and released on election night, which is why critical electoral trends can be identified by around 8:00 p.m., just an hour after the polls close.
This year, some 850,000 early ballots were mailed out in Maricopa County, which has 1.8 million registered voters. Obviously, residents in Arizona appreciate the mail-in-ballot option. They are replacing the familiar trip to the polling place with a new civic exercise - filling out their ballots over the kitchen table, with their election guides, newspaper endorsements and campaign brochures all at hand. It may not be as secretive as before, but it is deliberative and it has boosted participation.
Yet as we enter the last full week before Election Day, hundreds of thousands of voters have not yet mailed in their ballots. And we at the County Elections Department start to worry for several reasons:
- If voters fail to mail their ballots so it will reach the elections office by 7 p.m. Nov. 2, they won't be counted at all. And that's never good. If they drop their ballots off at their individual polling places or the envelopes are received in the mail on Nov. 2, they won't be counted until they are verified - after Election Day. And that takes time and money.
- In 2008, we had 100,000 ballots turned in on the last day. It cost us an additional $44,519 to process, verify and count those ballots. What's more, it is time consuming, and that means the outcome of close congressional, statewide and legislative races might not be known for days, thus negating all the progress we have made in election results tabulations in the last decade. Remember the nail-bitingly close primary race for attorney general just a couple of months ago? Think about a half dozen contests like that next week.
There is no shortcut to counting these ballots. Security of the ballot is our highest priority. The voter's signature is stored in an electronically held registration form. Election officials have to scan all the early ballot envelopes and match each ballot with the voter-registration form. That's why we instruct voters to sign the envelope before mailing it back in; because we have to make sure it is filled out by the actual registered voter.
When you add the provisional ballots that also have to be verified before counting, the results might come slowly. Plus, the cost goes up.
Please, complete your ballots. Mail them in promptly. You will greatly accelerate the process and be assured that your vote is counted in a timely manner.
Helen Purcell is Maricopa County Recorder. Karen Osborne is Maricopa County elections director.
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