{"id":20455,"date":"2025-06-28T00:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T00:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/20455\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T00:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T00:41:08","slug":"incorrect-letter-sent-to-83k-maricopa-county-voters-leads-to-confusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/20455\/","title":{"rendered":"Incorrect letter sent to 83K Maricopa County voters leads to confusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOENIX (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 A major mix-up at the Maricopa County Recorder\u2019s Office<\/a> caused chaos and confusion for more than 80,000 people.<\/p>\n

A letter was sent to tens of thousands of Arizona voters, indicating that they had recently moved. To vote in any upcoming elections, they would need to provide proof of residency. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat made me think that somebody stole my identity, so then I started panicking,\u201d said Beth Malapanes. <\/p>\n

On Thursday, she received a letter in the mail from the Recorder\u2019s Office. It starts with \u201cHave you moved?\u201d It then goes on to say that, according to ADOT, she obtained a new driver\u2019s license in another state, and if she doesn\u2019t prove she still resides in Arizona, she\u2019ll be placed on the inactive voter list.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was scared,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But Malapanes hasn\u2019t moved in more than a decade. She said after calling and waiting on hold for about an hour, she drove to the Recorder\u2019s Office to get some answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re like, \u2018Oh no, this is a mistake,\u2019\u201d said Malapanes. \u201cThis went out to 83,000 people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I can tell you is a notice was mistakenly sent out by a third-party vendor of the county. This was not an internal mistake of the Recorder\u2019s Office,\u201d Janine Petty, senior director of voter registration, said. <\/p>\n

She said the Recorder\u2019s Office first learned about the printing mistake on Thursday, when concerned voters contacted them. Petty advises anyone who got it to ignore it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe third-party vendor has already begun to process and send out corrected letters. They have taken full responsibility for the error and are sending out the corrected letters at their expense, so no additional cost to the county,\u201d said Petty.<\/p>\n

Peoria resident Vicki James is another one of the 83,000 people who received the letter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt begs to question the integrity of the office,\u201d said James.<\/p>\n

Petty said that all the voters who received the wrong note were on a list to receive something else.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe notice that these voters should have received was related to an MVD glitch,\u201d said Petty. <\/p>\n

\u201cCan you explain what that is?\u201d asked Arizona\u2019s Family Reporter Micaela Marshall.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we will have the voters receive their new corrected letter and if they have any questions or concerns they can contact our office about the letter,\u201d said Petty.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo send out garbage like this and you want me to again put trust in your office? I don\u2019t think so,\u201d said James.<\/p>\n

When asked how the office plans on rebuilding trust with the public, Petty said, \u201cThe Recorder\u2019s Office takes voter registration and list maintenance very, very seriously and again as I stated, this was a printer vendor error from a third-party vendor of the county and this was not a mistake of the Recorder\u2019s Office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petty said no voter records will be impacted by this mistake.<\/p>\n

Arizona\u2019s Family asked ADOT about the \u201cglitch\u201d<\/a> that Petty said the new letter will address. An ADOT spokesperson<\/a> said the problem affects anyone who got a license before October 1, 1996. That group of people must provide proof of citizenship in order to vote in future elections.<\/p>\n

See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send it to us here<\/a> with a brief description.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 A major mix-up at the Maricopa County Recorder\u2019s Office caused chaos and confusion for more…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[15941,5229,5643,1587,7182,19019,1588,19017,19020,1589,7183,19018,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,19016,19015],"class_list":{"0":"post-20455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-adot","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-arizona","11":"tag-az","12":"tag-azfamily","13":"tag-janine-petty","14":"tag-maricopa-county","15":"tag-maricopa-county-recorder","16":"tag-mistake","17":"tag-phoenix","18":"tag-phoenix-news","19":"tag-third-party-printer","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa","26":"tag-voter-problems","27":"tag-voter-registration"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114758214323325187","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}