Arizona Secretary of State responds after blame for election pamphlet issue
May 27, 2016, 5:30 AM | Updated: Oct 25, 2017, 3:27 pm
Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan speaks during a news conference after she certified the official canvass results of the March 22 presidential primary, Monday, April 4, 2016, in Phoenix. Despite ongoing concerns of long lines and other problems, Reagan certified the official canvass Monday and said she had no authority to do anything except sign off on the election. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan is addressing new allegations that her office was at fault for not distributing election pamphlets on time to voters in 13 Arizona counties for May’s special election.
Representatives for the tech company IBM told the Arizona Capitol Times they are not to blame for the delay in getting those pamphlets to around 200,000 voters. It affected all Arizona counties except Maricopa and Pima counties which use different computer systems.
The Secretary of State’s office is required by law to mail out election information pamphlets before early ballots are sent out to voters. More than 10 percent of the pamphlets sent out across the state were not sent out on time.
Reagan said her office did not get complete instructions from IBM on pulling voter data from a database management software system so accurate, voter mailing lists could be put together.
“That’s what you hire these database management companies to do, to instruct us how to pull data, and you get non-answers from them?” Reagan said.
She said her office has since moved on after the pamphlet issues.
“This happened on my watch, I take responsibility for that,” Reagan said. “We’ve moved on to a vendor that we believe is going to take data management much more seriously.”
Reagan certified the passage of both Proposition 123 and Proposition 124 at the Arizona State Capitol Thursday afternoon.
