Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer, second from right, and Pinal County Supervisor Jeffrey McClure answer questions about the ballot shortage during a press conference Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022, in Florence.
By Sasha Hupka and Robert Anglen || Arizona Republic
One of the state’s fast-growing counties approached the August primary with two staffers and an elections director who had just moved to Arizona.
By the time the election was over, mistakes cost the county at least $170,000 and a hit to public trust.
As the dust settles, the county has commissioned an outside elections expert to review what went wrong. That report is anticipated in 30 to 60 days.
The first glimmer of problems was a serious one. The county mailed early ballots to voters in July and quickly discovered that about 63,000 ballots contained errors related to local races. After long huddles on how to handle it, election officials sent out supplemental ballots for the missing council and mayoral contests.
Then, on the Aug. 2 election day, a quarter of the county’s polling places ran out of ballots. Voters were advised to come back later, impacting an unknown number of people who might have been unable to do that.
Two days later, as ballots were still being counted, Pinal County officials fired Elections Director David Frisk.
County leaders said they were embarrassed and frustrated by the election issues, and Frisk’s ouster was portrayed as a solution to ensure the debacle wouldn’t be repeated in the November general election.
But when Frisk came into his new position in March, just months before the primary, he only had two staffers, county spokesperson James Daniels confirmed. One of those employees left the department two weeks after Frisk’s start date.
He was supposed to have five employees, Daniels said.
The Elections Department wasn’t fully staffed until May 16, seven weeks before early ballots went to voters.
