PHOENIX — It has been a steady stream of cars driving into the Maricopa County Recorders Office parking lot in downtown Phoenix. Voters returning their ballots by mail. Recorder Adrian Fontes saying it’s been this way since Saturday. “When did you get your ballot?” ABC15 asked one lady. “They dropped them on the 7 I got mine the 8,” she said, holding the ballot to heart as she drove up to drop it off.
Across Arizona, more than 3,000,000 people have requested ballots by mail. In Maricopa County alone the number is 2,050,000. Fontes says it continues to grow. Voters have until October 23 to request a ballot by mail. So should you be concerned if you requested a ballot and have not yet received it? Fontes says no.
“They’re (USPS) going to be getting a lot of mail out tomorrow as today, the 12 is a holiday,” Fontes said. “I’d wait until the 14. If it doesn’t arrive by then call our office and let us know.”
The bar code you see on ballot envelopes, both the one that arrives in your mailbox as well as the one you mail back to the recorder is how the ballot is tracked by the USPS and the Recorder’s Office. With so many ballots being requested in Maricopa County alone Fontes says there is a possibility some might get lost. But he adds his office is prepared for that.
“The system is engineered exactly for this type of circumstance,” Fontes says. “We want people to be patient but it happens occasionally voters will not get their ballot. You can go to any early voting center in Maricopa County with an ID cast a new original ballot. We will cancel out the old one and you’ll be good to go.”
The Recorder’s Office will be mailing out ballots by mail thru October 23. On October 20, ballots will start being counted.
