Oops!
Officials aren’t supposed to mail out ballots for another two days in Arizona. But more than 3,000 voters in Maricopa County may have already opened their mailboxes and pulled out this year’s ballot.
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According to the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, Runbeck Election Services, a Phoenix-based election logistics company, erroneously mailed 3,126 early ballots to county voters for the midterm election in November on Oct. 1. That’s six days earlier than they should have been mailed out on Oct. 7, which marks the first day of early voting. The company notified the Recorder’s Office the next day.
Arizona voters still have until Oct. 5 to register to vote. Maricopa County has more than 2.5 million registered voters, according to the Arizona Secretary of State’s office’s most recent numbers.
The next day, Runbeck informed the Recorder’s Office of the mistake. After consulting with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, the Recorder’s Office determined that the early ballots remain valid and “do not need to be voided or reissued,” the office wrote in a statement, assuring that no voters were “adversely affected.”
“Voters may complete and return them normally,” the statement said, which includes mailing them back or placing the ballot in a dropbox. “Any ballots received before early voting begins will remain opened and securely stored until processing begins.”
The packets, called vote-by-mail envelope mailers by Runbeck, the company’s logistics team delivered to the USPS Business Mail Entry Unit last Thursday. The packets were processed separately from the rest of the ballots because they didn’t qualify for USPS automated mail processing, according to Runbeck’s statement.
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The pallet containing these packets was staged at Runbeck’s Phoenix facility for “their scheduled presentation to the USPS,” according to the company’s statement, when it was included with mail released that evening.
So, instead of being sent out this Wednesday, the packets reached USPS six days earlier than they should have. While the incident may seem like perfect fodder for an election conspiracy theory, the Recorder’s Office statement made it clear that the error “affected only the timing of the mailing” and “the correct ballots were mailed to the correct voters.”
Runbeck affirmed that finding, adding that the company has “reviewed the release of this skid” and it did not “involve the validity or production of the VBM packets.” Maricopa County should send the rest of its early ballots on Oct. 7.
“Runbeck accepts responsibility for their errors and will work with MCRO to implement appropriate controls to prevent it from ever happening again,” the Recorder’s Office said.
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