In a state where the integrity of elections has been heavily questioned, Pinal County couldn’t have picked a worse time to fumble its primary elections.
The trouble started when mail-in ballots were sent out that did not contain some municipal elections. Then on Tuesday night, the county reported that they had underestimated how many ballots were needed and ended up having to print more.
At a press conference Wednesday addressing the election problems, Pinal County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeffrey McClure said the elections director was responsible for making sure the ballots were correct and that there were enough of them.
This was the second major problem Pinal County Elections Director David Frisk presided over during the primary election cycle. A reporter asked McClure is any action would be taken against Frisk.
“We have not taken any action yet, but I can assure you that we will be taking action in the next day or so. We have some issues we have to look into, but very soon," McClure said.
When pressed about what that action could possibly look like, McClure responded, “With a major screwup like this, I would honestly say removal of the director.”
At the press conference, Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer steered clear of the election director’s future. Instead, he focused on the impact the lack of ballots had in the election, which he characterized as minimal.
“I really want to frame the size of the issue. I think there’s been some misunderstanding. There are approximately 900 plus ballots – different ballot forms – that we had out yesterday. We had 95 active polling locations. That means there were roughly 10 ballots at each one of these locations,” Volkmer said. “Again, that doesn’t mean every ballot was out. That means one of those individual ballot forms was not available. So, of the 900 plus [ballots] there were only about 25 actual ballots of any style that we were out of, or we were running low on. It’s not as pervasive as has previously been reported. It’s not 25% of all people were impacted. It’s really about 2.5% of the ballots were impacted.”
As of noon on Wednesday, about 50,000 votes had been cast in Pinal County.
Volkmer said that as of Wednesday, no legal challenges to the Pinal County election results have been filed. He added that there are still as many at 8,000 outstanding ballots left to counted -- 6,000 mail-in ballots that were personally dropped off on election day and 2,000 provisional ballots.
Amid questions about whether some voters were disenfranchised because of the ballot issue, Volkmer replied, “We did everything we could. We offered them the ability to wait as long as they were capable of waiting. Some people chose not to wait, some people chose to leave and come back, some chose to leave and not come back. We can’t control that. What we can control is print as many ballots as we can once the issues were identified.”
Volkmer added that not having an adequate number of ballots was the result of a perfect storm of underestimating the ballots needed, an increase in independents at the polls wanting to vote Republican and an increase in the county's population.
“We’ve also had a 10% increase in our population in the last couple of years since the last election,” he said. “It’s always a guess and we didn’t guess on the side of having plenty of ballots.”
Volkmer emphasized that human error was to blame for the election snafus and there was nothing sinister or nefarious about the situation.
“We’re all human. There but for the grace of God go I. We’ve all screwed up. There was nothing sinister. It wasn’t as if we said, ‘Hey, this is only going to impact Republicans or this is only going to impact the Democrats.’ This was widespread. This was equal opportunity. It was just simply a mistake,” Volkmer said. “Our intention is to give out all the information to the public. We aren’t hiding anything. We made a mistake. This county made a mistake. It was embarrassing to everyone here.
“I’ve not seen evidence of a nefarious act. I have seen mistakes made on a grand scale.”
He added that an investigation will be launched to see what happened, but that a full analysis could not be done as the general election is just months away and early ballots have to go out.
“What we can’t do right now is take the time for a full analysis of everything that went wrong because we have an election to get ready for. We have ballots we have to prepare and go out in about 30 days,” Volkmer said. “It’s happened once, it’s happened twice, it cannot happen a third time. The [chairman for the Pinal County Board of Supervisors] and I are united in this. It will not happen a third time.”
McClure added that “We are looking at restructuring the way we do our elections department. The conversations aren’t just conversations. They are truly what do we do. We cannot go backwards.”
Some candidates attending the press conference called for immediate changes at the county’s elections office. Although he was discussed, County Elections Director Frisk was never mentioned by name.
“There has to be a change in the … people running the elections,” one candidate said. “There has to be a change -- a different person brought in that can oversee it.”
When a reporter asked McClure if there could be a different elections director for the November election, he replied simply, ““very possibly.”
Janet Perez News Editor | Queen Creek &
San Tan Valley @AzNewsmedia
Meet Janet Janet Perez joined Independent Newsmedia as editor of the Queen Creek Independent and Florence Independent in 2020. She started her career in 1989 with the Gannett-owned El Paso Times. In 1992, she moved to Tempe and has worked in newspapers, magazines, radio and television. She left Arizona for three years to work at New Mexico State University and Baylor University before returning to work at Arizona State University. Missing the business, she went back to journalism in 2017.
Community: A long-time pet owner, she supports animal welfare causes.
Education: University of Texas at El Paso with a BA in journalism and a minor in political science.
Random Fact: She had a head full of random facts.
Hobbies: Reading, watching documentaries, cooking and playing with her dogs.
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