'18 Midterms: Dems win House by largest midterm raw vote margin ever
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PHOENIX, ARIZONA — As residents of Arizona’s eighth congressional district cast ballots in a special election to replace former Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) in Congress, roughly 140,000 of them may be unaware they are eligible to vote because they did not receive the ID card the county is required to send them after they register.
According to the Arizona Republic, Maricopa County officials have not sent all voters the cards they can use to cast a ballot under Arizona’s voter ID law because of an issue with the company used to print the materials. The paper reports that just 60,000 ID cards have been mailed to people who recently registered or changed their registration, while about 140,000 have not been sent.
“It’s not that big of an impact on voters because we have redundancies in our system,” said Fontes, a Democrat who took office in 2016 after he campaigned on a promise to fight voter suppression and expand the right to vote in a county notorious for voting issues. “Every voter already got either a ballot in the mail or they got a sample ballot in the mail.”
“It’s another black eye for this Recorder’s Office,” Mesa, Arizona voter Larry Smith, who hasn’t received a new card even though he updated his registration in January, told The Arizona Republic. “You’ve got people registering to vote, some of them for the first time in their lives. It’s the duty of the Recorder to send them a voter ID card.”
During the presidential primary in March 2016, some Maricopa County voters waited in line for up to five hours to cast a ballot. The chaos led to an investigation by the Department of Justice and numerous lawsuits, including one filed by the Democratic National Committee.
Before the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Arizona was required to pre-clear any changes to its voting law with the DOJ.
Arizona now allows any eligible voter who desires to cast an early ballot by mail. According to the secretary of state, roughly 150,000 people had already voted as of Monday morning, making up around 80 percent of the of the total votes that likely will be cast. Of those that have already voted, almost 60 percent are 65 or older.
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