Arizona Supreme Court finds no reason to extend ballot curing deadline

As ballot results continued to trickle in after Election Day, concerns over vote count delays and ballot signature issues led voter rights groups to file an emergency petition to the Arizona Supreme Court.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Campaign Legal Center on Saturday requested a four-day extension for voters to "cure" their ballot beyond the original 5 p.m. Sunday deadline, arguing that “tens of thousands of Arizonans stand to be disenfranchised without any notice, let alone an opportunity to take action to ensure their ballots are counted.”

In the petition, ACLU and CLC claimed that thousands of mail-in ballots in Arizona wouldn’t be processed until after the deadline, meaning some voters wouldn’t know if their ballot had an issue until it was too late to cure it.

“Because these ballots have not even been processed, Respondents have not identified which ballots are defective and have not notified voters of the need to cure those defects,” the petition stated.

What is ballot curing?

When election officials are unable to match voters' signatures on a ballot affidavit with known signature samples, they attempt to contact voters to confirm their ballot in a process called "curing."

According to Arizona law, voters whose mail-in ballot has an inconsistent signature have five business days after Election Day to confirm or correct the signature. In Maricopa County, election officials aimed to have 99% of all valid ballots counted and reported by the end of the cure period.

Voters were able to address their signature mismatch by Sunday evening. If the issue was not rectified by the deadline, their ballot was rejected.

'Counties have notified all voters'

On Sunday, the petition was denied by the state's high court, citing that voters have been given "reasonable time" to correct any deficiencies in their ballots by the statutory deadline, according to the court's order.

The court collected information from eight counties, including Maricopa County, the news release noted. The court affirmed that no county that responded requested an extension beyond the Sunday deadline, with each asserting that reasonable efforts were made to properly notify all voters of inconsistent signatures.

“Thus, the Court is not presented with evidence that any voters will be prevented from curing a defective ballot by today’s 5:00 p.m. deadline," the court's order read. "In short, there is no evidence of disenfranchisement before the Court."

According to Maricopa Count and the secretary of state, tabulation progress for Maricopa County was almost 99% complete as of Wednesday evening, with an estimated 7,100 ballots left to process.

Coleby Phillips is a reporter at The Arizona Republic focusing on election misinformation. The work is made possible through a grant from the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. Reach him at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Supreme Court rejects request to extend ballot curing deadline