PIMA COUNTY (KGUN9-TV) - Many voters were turned away from the presidential preference election on Tuesday. Voters who thought they were registered as democrats or republicans were told they had no party affiliation.
"All of them looked confused," said voter Stacy Randell. Like, 'yeah, I've been a democrat for years,' or 'Ive been a republican for years.' They didn't understand where the confusion came in."
Pima County recorder Ann Rodriguez says they received a lot of complaints.
"Extremely frustrated, some of them were very angry, some of of them were very rude to poll workers because the poll workers were delivering the message that they weren't eligible for this election."
Although some people had been registered with a certain party for years, somewhere along the line they were switched to independent.
"We walked them through every single change that we had on their file. Some of them went to MVD and they registered there, but when it came to the party affiliation they left it blank or drew a line," said Rodriguez. "If they were registered as a democrat or republican and then they went to the motor vehicle division or did the Service Arizona online and did not choose a party, it puts them in a blank format, so then we change them to party not designated."
That's what happened to Lauren Dautrich. She thought she was a registered democrat, but was turned away from voting yesterday. She says the DMV updated her information and she wasn't even given the option to choose a party.
"I'm not really sure why the DMV has the power to do that, or the ability to do that." said Dautrich. "Even if it's something that kind of defaults when you change your license or change your address, it shouldn't be a default to begin with. The DMV should be letting you know about it."
The Pima County Recorder encourages all voters to check the status of their registration online before election day.
