Supplemental ballots for local races hitting mailboxes

Supplemental ballots for the Aug. 2 City Council primary election were mailed Saturday to Maricopa voters, who should begin seeing them in their mailboxes by today.

The ballots also are available at early voting locations.

The supplemental ballot and envelope have an orange stripe on them to differentiate them from the original Pinal County-prepared ballots, which omitted the City Council race from ballots sent to many city voters.

The county Board of Supervisors unanimously approved sending supplemental ballots with missing municipal races to voters in the seven cities affected by the ballot omission. The supplemental ballot will only include municipal elections; the original ballot will be counted for federal, statewide and legislative elections.

The process will work as follows:

• Voters on the permanent early voting list (PEVL) will have a new ballot mailed to them that will contain only the municipal election candidates and/or issues. Their original ballot, whether they have already mailed it or will do so in the future, will count for all elections except the municipal races;

• In-person voters will receive two separate ballots at their polling place – one for federal, statewide, legislative and county races, and another for their municipal election if they live in one of the seven affected cities. Those ballots will be counted on two separate machines;

• In-person voters who are not in one of the affected cities will receive a single ballot.

Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer said last week the voting process will be very much the same as it has always been, with a few additional steps. Voters will get two ballots instead of one, and sign two registration books, but otherwise will be the same process for voters, he said.

The orange stripe was added to the supplemental ballots to help ensure ballots are not counted twice, officials said.