Voter duplication mistake had cost, mitigating issues

When Yuma County's registered voters all received new voter identification cards a number of weeks ago, some were surprised to find they were getting not one, but two cards.

The cards contained the voter's precinct number, supervisor district, legislative district and congressional district, in addition to party affiliation and various other identifying information for the voter.

The new voter cards were an important part of this election cycle because it was the first time people were voting in new congressional and legislative districts, and perhaps new supervisor districts. As part of the redistricting process after the census, voters could be confused about their election districts and the cards helped voters become familiar with them.

It didn't take long for county election officials to learn about the duplication mistake — some county workers were among those getting the double mailing.

It is not known exactly how many duplicates were mailed out. County Recorder Robyn Stallworth Pouquette estimated last week that it was probably not more than 2,000. That is out of a total of some 74,000 voter information cards that were sent out.

A relative small percentage, perhaps, but still the duplication involved waste of some taxpayer money. It shouldn't have happened.

But the circumstances will likely cause many taxpayers to give the recorder's office a little slack.

The massive reissue of cards was done with a staff of only four workers and all of it had to be done manually. The voter information had to be verified and updated and then the cards had to printed out, folded, taped and mailed, noted Stallworth Pouquette. All 74,000 of them!

The important thing to the recorder was that the information got to the voters, even if some mistakenly received two cards. We agree.