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Overseas voters who are registered in Arizona are receiving their ballots this week in a new way for the state’s special congressional election — but at least a few county officials are worried that the new system isn’t ready, and say they didn’t have enough time to notify voters of the change.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announced the launch of the new system on Friday for military and overseas voters who are registered to vote in Arizona and eligible to vote through the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA. These voters will now cast their ballots through a web portal run by an outside vendor, technology company Enhanced Voting, rather than using an in-house system.
Fontes’ office is promoting the change as a long-needed upgrade that will allow overseas voters to cast their ballots anonymously and fully electronically for the first time. “This new system is a leap forward in ensuring that every eligible voter, no matter where they are in the world, can easily cast a ballot that is both secure and truly anonymous,” Fontes wrote in a news release.
But recorders are concerned that the rollout of the system has been rushed. Pinal County Recorder Dana Lewis said she didn’t find out until Wednesday that recorders would not be able to use the state’s old system to send ballots for the congressional election.
“The timing is not right,” Lewis said.
Recorders will send out ballots on Friday and Saturday to overseas voters registered in the state’s 7th Congressional District for the special general election to replace late Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who died earlier this year. That election is on Sept. 23, but the federal deadline to send out absentee ballots to military and overseas voters is 45 days before an election — which is this Saturday.
There are 680 of those voters eligible for the congressional election across six southern Arizona counties.
Under the new system, overseas voters registered in Arizona log in to a website where they can fill out their ballot and either submit it electronically or print it out and mail it in. Under the old, in-house system, voters had to print out their ballot and either mail it back, or email a scanned image of the printout. The new system will make voting possible for voters without access to a printer.
The news release said that launching the new system for the special congressional election “allows for only a limited number of voters to be impacted.” The initial rollout, it said, would be “treated as a pilot program to allow for flexibility and learning during this election.”
Several county recorders told Votebeat they’ve been trying for months to get Fontes to pump the brakes on the system. On Wednesday, the leaders of the Arizona Association of County Recorders, which represents recorders in all 15 counties, met with Fontes to express their concerns about outstanding problems.
Lewis said the main concerns were that recorders had so many unanswered questions, and that there wasn’t enough time to educate voters on the change.
Yuma County Recorder David Lara said the state should have held off until next year’s elections to launch the system, which would have allowed time to work out any kinks.
“Because we have this special election in CD7, we are basically the guinea pigs,” he said.
Aaron Thacker, communications director for the Secretary of State’s Office, said counties have known about the new system since 2023, and knew the launch was coming. He said it was technically necessary to shut down the old system to launch the new one.
There was extensive testing of the systems, he said, “with counties actively involved.”
“We believe that all of the questions raised have been addressed,” he said. “The system has been well tested and validated, and it is ready to go.”
Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.
