By Corinne Murdock |
A glitch in the state’s voter registration system resulted in dozens of voters, potentially more, to have their party preference switched to independent.
In an email last week to county recorders, first reported by the Arizona Daily Independent, the secretary of state’s office said that at least 65 voters’ registrations were switched to independent because they wrote “party” after “Republican” or “Democratic.”
“We are currently investigating an issue where EZ Voter transactions party preferences as of 1/17/2024 are now containing the word ‘Party’ at the end of the party preference value,” said the office. “As a result, the current AVID system may set an EZ Voter party preference to ‘Other’ by default instead of one of the designated party preferences. This is currently impacting all recognized party preference values.”
AVID — the Access Voter Information Database system — somehow began interpreting certain Republican and Democratic voter registrations as “other,” meaning “independent.” Of note, the secretary of state’s office used only Republicans as an example of affected voters in their email.
“[W]hen processing an EZ Voter registration the party may be marked as ‘Other’ and ‘Republican Party’ is written in. This example record would need to have the party preference marked as ‘Republican,’” said the office.
The secretary of state’s office explained in a follow-up email that they would provide county officials with lists of the affected voter registration records.
Some voters reported on social media that they ran into issues with verifying their voter registration in the days following the email alerting counties to the AVID issue.
The deadline for voter registration is in less than 30 days, and only those registered with a party may vote in the primary election. Independents have until Feb. 20 to update their party preference.
Although the secretary of state’s office notified county recorders of the glitch, they didn’t notify the public. On the day they emailed the county recorders, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ account made no mention of the glitch. Instead, Fontes highlighted a local advocacy group, Lutheran Advocacy Ministry of Arizona, for hosting him.
Fontes also made no mention of the glitch in a Tuesday interview with Arizona Horizon. Rather, Fontes took the time to focus on addressing election misinformation, rehashing the recent No Labels Party court ruling, and advocating for treating election threats as domestic terrorism.
However, Fontes did briefly mention the lack of competence in current election workers.
“We’re having a tough time ensuring everyone is sufficiently trained and equipped to get the elections done that need to be done for our voters,” said Fontes.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
