Oops! Maricopa county provides wrong voting date again in election materials
PHOENIX (AP) — Maricopa County elections officials are drawing criticism for another instance of providing the wrong date for the Nov. 6 general election in materials printed in Spanish.
County elections spokeswoman Yvonne Reed acknowledges that the Spanish language side of 2,000 of the 3,000 printed bookmarks with election information erroneously give the election date as Nov. 8.
Liberal activists are accusing Republican County Recorder Helen Purcell of trying to suppress the Hispanic vote.
Reed denies that and takes responsibility for the error. She says she failed to change all the dates when updating a printing sheet used last year when some jurisdictions held elections on Nov. 8.
The county previously acknowledged that it printed up to 50 Spanish language voting information cards with the wrong date for this year’s general election.
In a statement emailed to 3TV and azfamily.com Tuesday afternoon, Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox said, “I believe it is vitally important that every voter know that the elections occur on Nov. 6. Every vote counts. It is regrettable that this error impacts Spanish speaking voters, given Arizona’s disgraceful history with regard to minority voting rights.”
Wilcox continued, “I think it is very important that Mrs. Purcell is going to take the unprecedented step of taking out ads to communicate the correct date to our Spanish speaking citizens. I commend her efforts to fix these errors.”
