Tucson Region

Persistence pays for early, new voters

Arizona's county recorders have been urging patience on the part of voters as they dealt with a deluge of new registrants and requests for mail-in ballots, but some voters found they needed persistence, not patience, to ensure their right to vote Tuesday. Not being persistent has cost some voters that right. Irma A. Vasquez decided to vote for the first time this year at age 51. An elementary-school teacher's assistant, Vasquez was at the West Campus of Pima Community College earlier this fall buying books for a class when a man at a registration table there talked her into signing up. She filled out the form but never received a voting card and is not on the voting list. She didn't keep a receipt so there is no way of letting her vote in this election, said Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez. The same is true for Anand ManaDeva, who said he also decided to vote this year for the first time at age 46. "With the war and all those children getting killed, I thought it was time," he said. ManaDeva, who owns a real-estate firm, said he filled out a form at a National Association of Women Business Owners luncheon on Sept. 14. He registered as a Democrat and remembers having a minor argument with the woman who took his form about his views. His registration was never recorded. When he contacted the woman this week to ask what happened, she told him she turned in all the forms, then sent him an e-mail from a Republican group soliciting volunteers to work for President Bush's re-election Tuesday. Lola Kakes, public policy committee chairwoman for the women's business group, said she has apologized to ManaDeva, but doesn't know why his registration was never recorded. The woman who took his registration remembers doing so, said Kakes. She said the woman separated the registrations into Republican and Democrat and sent them to the respective party headquarters. "The fact that this is the first time he's registering makes me sadder than anything," Kakes said. Recorders in Southern Arizona say they've heard from a small number of voters with similar experiences, but have not seen any pattern that points to organized deception. Persistence paid off for Butch Garrity, a retired Navy veteran who recently moved from California to Hereford. He said he and his wife mailed registration forms to the Cochise County recorder in mid-September. As the sign-up deadline approached, he called the recorder and was told they weren't on the rolls. The Garritys re-registered at Democratic headquarters in Sierra Vista and he called to make sure they were received by the Oct. 4 cutoff. Noreen Hayes just wanted to vote early, but because of her persistence was offered the opportunity to vote often. Hayes, who divides her time between Texas and Arizona, decided to register here because she would be in Tucson on Election Day. A man working out at her gym said he had registration forms in his car and she filled one out. She heard nothing for weeks and finally arranged to have a mail-in ballot sent from Texas. She has since received a voting card and a mail-in ballot from Pima County. Hayes jokingly said she's tempted to vote twice, but won't. "I'm 76 years old and I can't afford to be led away in chains to the penitentiary," she said. John Harman, 42, was relieved to be able to vote before he left for a U.S. Navy posting Monday. He said he requested early ballots for himself and his wife, in person at the Pima County Recorder's Office on Oct. 1. He called on Oct. 14 and finally received a ballot on Oct. 21, four days after his wife's ballot arrived. The law requires that requests for mail-in ballots be processed in 48 hours, but many recorders said they simply couldn't meet the deadline with early voting growing in volume so dramatically. Pima County finally cleared the decks last week. It processed more than 162,000 early ballot requests, said Recorder Rodriguez. Santa Cruz County Recorder Suzie Sainz said her office sent the "last big batch" of mail-in ballots on Monday, but still had a few to mail Wednesday. Requests for mail-in ballots grew this election year to 4,115, she said, about 20 percent of the small county's electorate and more than double the 1,689 she processed for the 2000 election.