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As Arizona count ticks on, volunteers race to make sure ballots are not rejected
InternationalNov 11. 2020
About 4,000 mail ballots in Arizona still needed to have voter signatures verified as of Tuesday. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Caitlin O’Hara
By The Washington Post · Hannah Knowles · NATIONAL, POLITICS, COURTSLAW
TOLLESON, Ariz. – It took her three tries to get the right door, and then no one answered. Maria Hernández started walking back to her car to find the next person on her list at risk of losing his or her vote.
Biden supporters celebrate on Sunday in Phoenix. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Caitlin O’Hara
Then a woman came out of the house. It was the voter’s mom. Hernández explained that her daughter needed to call the county by Tuesday to confirm that the signature on her ballot’s envelope was hers.
“It’ll take her, like, one minute,” Hernández said, offering her own phone number for any questions. The woman agreed to remind her daughter.
“Biden is so close,” Hernández said as she left.
Days after President-elect Joe Biden was declared the victor in the White House race, the vote in Arizona remains too close to call and the margin is narrowing.
Maria Hernández works as a volunteer with the Arizona Democratic Party to cure ballots. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The WashingtonPost by Caitlin O’Hara
Biden leads President Donald Trump by less than 15,000 votes statewide, with about 60,000 ballots still listed as uncounted on Tuesday by the secretary of state. That includes more than 20,000 ballots ready for tallying, tens of thousands of provisional ballots left to process and about 4,200 mail ballots with signatures that need to be verified.
Tuesday at 5 p.m. is the deadline for most voters to straighten out any problems with signatures on mail ballots and provide the proper identification for provisional ballots, and party volunteers have been scrambling to make sure each vote that has been flagged for problems gets fixed, or “cured.”
During this year’s primaries, more than 534,000 mail ballots were rejected across 23 states because of missed deadlines or voter mistakes, according to a tally by The Washington Post, raising fears among voting rights advocates that the surge in mail voting this year could lead to large numbers of ballots that get tossed for errors.
Most Arizonans had already voted by mail before this year, however, and the rush to cure to ballots is not new. So the parties were prepared, said Steven Slugocki, the chair of Maricopa County’s Democratic Party.
Hundreds of Democratic volunteers have been texting, calling and door-knocking since Election Day in Maricopa, where most of the state’s population lives, Slugocki said. The ballot-curing is more important for tight local races than for the presidential contest, he said, given Biden’s current lead. But he was cautious.
“This is just being prepared and making sure that we have every vote, because it could make a difference,” he said.
A 2019 law gave Arizona voters five business days after an election to verify a signature that is flagged for not matching what the government has on file from voter registration forms, previous ballots and motor-vehicle records. For most counties, that means voters can “cure” their ballots through Tuesday.
In Maricopa County, as many as 31 election staffers are working to verify voters’ signatures depending on the day, said Megan Gilbertson, a spokeswoman for county’s elections department. On Monday evening, the county reported more than 13,500 mail ballots left to process and 2,300 still needing verification.
Then there are provisional ballots, which voters cast when they show up on Election Day without the proper ID or in other circumstances requiring follow-up. Twenty-five staffers are working on provisional ballots, Gilbertson said, and there were 8,200 left to verify Tuesday.
In the 2018 election, only about 300 ballots in Maricopa were ultimately rejected for signature mismatch, while about 1,800 had no signature. The county mails letters, emails, makes phone calls and even texts voters trying to get in touch about questionable signatures, Gilbertson said.
But with 2.6 million registered voters spread across 9,200 square miles – an area larger than some states – it’s up to others to knock on doors.
The Arizona GOP did not respond to inquiries about any last-minute efforts to help cure ballots, though some Republican leaders have been urging people to check the status of their early ballots. On social media, the party has been more focused on court fights.
A Trump campaign lawsuit says “up to thousands” of voters in Maricopa could have lost their ability to vote in certain races because poll workers gave them faulty instructions, while the Arizona secretary of state says the suit is “grasping at straws.” County officials say less than 200 votes are at stake.
Groups on the left, meanwhile, have been organizing to take advantage of the ballot-curing window. The state Democratic Party offered virtual trainings and gathered volunteers for masked, socially distant canvassing shifts. Pro-Biden Latino organizers urged Spanish speakers to sign up, especially in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.
Hernández, a 28-year-old Phoenix native who now lives in Los Angeles, headed Monday to the suburbs and farmland where her Spanish skills came in handy. She said she arrived in the Phoenix area several weeks ago to get out the vote in her hometown as an organizer with Unite Here Local 11.
The effort was personal for her. The daughter of undocumented immigrants from Mexico, she said she has fought for years against the immigration policies of Trump and his allies. She remembers feeling joy in 2016 when Maricopa County ousted Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for his sweeps targeting the undocumented – and horror when Trump prevailed later in the night.
“Arizona can be different,” she said, as the state was on track to elect a Democratic president and a Democratic senator. “Arizona can be welcoming. It can be, you know, a place where me and people like my family don’t have to be scared all the time.”
She had some successes Monday, such as the voter who had been meaning to call the county about her signature and did it there on the spot. The whole process took minutes, just as Hernández had promised.
“Congratulations!” she said on the doorstep as they hung up together. “Your ballot was just counted!”
Then she went back to her car, thinking of the home with the Biden-Harris sign in the window where no one answered. She would double back.
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