By Sasha Hupka | Arizona Republic
A congressional candidate has filed a lawsuit against Pinal County alleging that officials’ plan to fix the county’s ballot woes would violate statutes and create “chaos and confusion in the upcoming primary election,” according to court documents.
Kathleen Winn, a Republican running for a House seat in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, filed the suit July 11, days after Pinal County elections staff discovered that they had mailed out ballots with errors to an estimated 63,000 voters.
Ballots in Superior, Maricopa, Casa Grande, Eloy and Mammoth, as well as the Pinal County portions of Apache Junction and Queen Creek, were sent out without city and town contests printed on them.
The contests erroneously appeared on ballots sent to voters in nearby unincorporated areas who are not eligible to vote in the municipal races.
Arizona’s 6th Congressional District encompasses the southeastern portion of Pinal County, as well as parts of Graham, Cochise, Greenlee and Pima counties.
Pinal County, located south and east of the Phoenix area and north of Tucson and Pima County, includes about 450,000 residents.
Pinal County’s plan to fix ballot errors
County officials have been scrambling since the errors were discovered last week. They initially said they would send out supplementary ballots in all-mail elections for affected municipalities. But the County Attorney’s Office discovered flaws in that plan Monday, the same day the lawsuit was filed, forcing officials to go back to the drawing board.
