"I got pretty revved up": Voters angry over address confirmation letters from Maricopa County

Yahoo

a day ago

The Brief
The Maricopa County Recorder's Office sent out about 83,000 erroneous letters to voters, asking them to confirm their address.
The office says the letters were sent due to a glitch from a third-party vendor and should be disregarded by voters.
A new, corrected letter will be sent to all affected voters sometime next week.
PHOENIX - The Maricopa County Recorder's Office is pledging to fix a big glitch.
Tens of thousands of voters received strange letters in the mail asking if they had moved, when they had not. The letters then asked them to fix the mistake.
What we know
Approximately 83,000 of these letters were sent out on county recorder letterhead and started hitting mailboxes this week – out of the blue.
It said Arizona had received information that these people had obtained a driver's license or identification card from another state and no longer lived at the address that matches their voter registration file. And then proof was required, like a birth certificate or passport proving their current address.
What they're saying
All, or most of these letters were sent to people who hadn't moved, or got another ID, like this man in Fountain Hills.
"You need to admit right away what happened. What you're doing to take care of it, you need to get ahead of the problem. That way you have the problem. "
On June 27, the office admitted it was an error and blamed a third-party vendor.
"I got pretty revved up," said one man who did not want to be identified.
He was angry after getting the letter from the county asking if he had moved and then demanding proof that he had not.
"What gets my gall is that I've been a resident of Arizona since 1972," he said. "I joined the Arizona National Guard in '81. Served my country for 20 years all over the world.. came back with a ton of injuries. And I have to prove my citizenship because of your glitch?"
The backstory
The letter stated that Arizona had received information that these people had obtained a driver's license or identification card from another state and no longer lived at the address that matches their voter registration file. It then requested proof, such as a birth certificate or passport, to prove their current address.
"They don't need to do anything right now. Disregard the letter," said Janine Petty, director of voter registration.
The county quickly admitted the mistake, blaming a third-party vendor error, but wouldn't go much further.
"So the voters should disregard the letter that they received and wait for the corrected letter," Petty said.
What's next
The new corrected letter is expected to start to arrive sometime next week. But for this man, the damage is already done.
"If there was a fire and all the records were burned, I get it, but it's not my job as a taxpayer to fix the bureaucratic glitch," he said.
The recorder's office would not say what the new letter will say or if the original letter was in any way targeting a specific group, area or party affiliation. It would only confirm that the new letters would come at no cost to the taxpayer.
"Today, the Maricopa County Recorder's Office (MCRO) issued the following statement regarding the voter correspondence that was erroneously sent by a third-party vendor for Maricopa County.
Yesterday, the MCRO was made aware of voter correspondence sent in error by a third-party vendor for Maricopa County. No voter records were affected due to this error. This error was not caused by internal mistakes at the MCRO. The vendor has taken full responsibility for the mistake, and has already begun mailing out the corrected correspondence to the affected voters at their own expense, so there will be no additional cost to the taxpayers.
The approved correspondence was for voters needing to provide Documentary Proof of Citizenship (DPOC) related to the MVD glitch. The 90-day period for return of DPOC begins on the date the notice is sent out. Due to the vendor error, the operative date for the start of the 90-day period will be the date that the corrected correspondence is sent to each voter.
If voters have questions, please contact our office at 602-506-1511 or [e-mail]."