Adrian Fontes/Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore
By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
Maricopa County elections officials will give voters a chance to confirm their identities before it rejects their early ballots due to mismatched signatures, granting a request by a coalition of civil and voting rights groups that hopes to see such policies enacted statewide for the 2018 election.
County Recorder Adrian Fontes said his office’s top priority is to ensure that voters’ needs are met. And as long as his office has the ability to contact voters to find out whether they were the ones who signed their early ballot envelopes, he said it should do so.
Just 24 hours earlier, Fontes told The Mirror that he liked the idea, but that his office lacked statutory authority to implement the policy. However, he emphasized that no statute prohibits him from doing so, either.
“This is, in my view, a policy decision,” Fontes said. “So, instead of waiting for the Legislature or a mandate from the secretary of state, I just want to do what’s right by the voters.”
