TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — It’s time for another election. The primary is set for July 21. Mail ballots should be hitting mailboxes soon.
As candidates work to win over the voters, election officials are making sure they’ll get an accurate count of the votes.
Before every election the Secretary of State brings election departments a test: A collection of ballots that simulate an election. If the test run does not produce the expected result, election workers track down the error to make sure it won’t happen again.
Elections Director Constance Hargrove expects more real ballots to come in by mail. For the real election, inspectors will compare those voter signatures with signatures on file.
People who want to drop ballots in person can confirm their identity with a new process where they can bring in a photo ID like a driver’s license, and scan it in.
Hargrove says, ”That early ballot then does not have to go to the Recorder’s Office for signature verification so it speeds up the process and makes it a little less work for the Recorder after the election.”
You can find a guide to early ballot drop offs at this link.
Long before it was common to question whether elections were fair and honest, both parties routinely placed observers in the counting rooms to see the counting for themselves.
Barbara Tellman has been an observer for the Democrats for many election counts. And she’s heard people question the results.
”We can verify to our constituents that this is a really good process basically. In case anything does happen we are there to say, “Hey what is this all about, why did you do that.?”
She says besides watching the machine counts, she and other volunteer observers get a group of ballots and do their own hand count to further confirm the vote count is accurate.
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Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.
