3:35pm: STICKER SHOCK! All Early Voters In Maricopa County WILL Get "I Voted" Stickers!
Yes, it's true!* One of the most popular voting-related items is that Election Day "I Voted" sticker. In fact, the sticker phenomenon is actually part of the reason that so many of Arizona's ballots are tallied days after Election Day.
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| Fontes hand-models new stickers (scree cap) |
So, the big news today from Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes may actually cut down on the post-election jitters that candidates and friends experience. The Elections Department is now going to include one of their four new "I Voted" stickers with each early ballot mailed out to the more than 1.8 million early voters.
Fontes made the big announcement in a Facebook Live video this afternoon, and noted that questions about the early voting stickers are one of the most common things he is asked, and that Election Day pollworkers give out thousands of the stickers to persons who wait to drop off their early ballots just so that they can have the sticker to wear the rest of the day. (I spend most Election Days in many polling places and can attest to that phenomenon.)
Fontes said that "literally, tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of voters will drop off their ballot, because they want a sticker." Mailing the stickers will encourage mailing back the ballots rather than dropping them off. That will help the County validate the signatures *before* Election Day so that the counting goes faster, and it will reduce possible virus exposure contacts for the voters and the pollworkers.
The Recorder also indicated that his office will be sending out postcards encouraging approximately 600,000 county voters to *request* an early ballot. That is the 26% of the voter register not yet on the PEVL (Permanent Early Voting List).
(From personal experience, many of those 600,000 people have not signed up because they like to go on Election Day and feed their completed ballot into the machine. However, in Maricopa County, it just gives them THE OPTION of voting early. They could still choose to vote in person and feed the ballot into the machine - as long as they had not already returned the early ballot.)
The only concern about the new stickers is that - with four varieties - how are collectors going to compile an entire set while still honoring the "one person, one vote" policy that applies here in Arizona? Of course, the answer is....... eBay.
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