How the Recorder functions
Arizona’s 15 County Recorders perform two essential functions. One pertains to caring for and cataloging many of a County’s most important documents, safely storing them and making them easy to find. The other pertains to ensuring that each County has safe, reliable and transparent Elections.
A County Recorder processes, stores, and provides access to permanent public records. Anything of value may be recorded, e.g., real estate transactions, deeds, maps, liens, judgments, marriage certificates, an array of public government materials needed for personal and business purposes, privately available military discharge documents, etc.
A Recorder meanwhile provides specialized services required for secure voting. The office updates and maintains all voter registration records. These records are used to safeguard early, mail-in, provisional and conditional provisional voting. Throughout each election season, which can often average 50 different contests, a Recorder receives green outer envelopes containing sealed yellow affidavit envelopes, and never opens those yellow envelopes to look at the ballots. Those sealed yellow envelopes are processed and scanned, and their signatures verified as belonging to the voter.
The unopened affidavit envelopes are then bundled in groups of 200 with an accompanying sheet that lists voter registration numbers and full names. The Early Board will verify this count and ensure each affidavit in each batch is from the listed voter. The Recorder’s Office seals these batches in secure locked bins until they are turned over to that bipartisan Early Board.
If more than one jurisdiction is having an election, each jurisdiction’s ballots – still secure within their sealed affidavit envelopes – are kept together, separate, from start to finish.
Then these batches of still unopened envelopes are sent to Elections via a bipartisan ballot processing team. Finally at Elections, and with many safeguards in place, including a livestream camera and election team workers from different parties, the envelopes are opened and their ballots are tabulated by Elections Officials.
The signature verification process alone takes time and effort. It involves comparing the signature on a voter’s affidavit envelope or ballot affidavit with information kept in the voter registration database. These may include voter registration forms, MVD records, and previous early ballots. A voter is contacted if the signatures do not match, and given three or five business days after the election, depending on the election, to “cure” an inconsistent signature.
An important and ongoing and related task is to regularly “clean” voter registration files. This should happen periodically so that they remain useful, secure and cost-effective. The active voter list should only include those people who are eligible to vote. This is a time-consuming task and requires many steps to ensure that people who are eligible to vote may do so.
In February 2023, a majority on the Cochise County Board of Supervisors ceded most of the Supervisors’ own statutory power and authority over County Elections to vastly expand the current County Recorder’s control over Elections. The underlying contract was written to sunset by January 2025 – unless renewed or terminated before then.
Improvements planned
If elected, Anne would run the Recorder’s Office so as to comply with all laws and regulations.
Anne Carl’s supporters – from all places on the political spectrum – understand and appreciate that, if she is elected, whether she is given expanded powers over the Elections Office or not, she will treat everyone with fairness and dignity. For example, she will not handpick an Elections Director who apparently shares a specific political agenda, nor will she select one who fails to meet even the most basic and required job qualifications as set forth in the job listing. She will also never abuse her power by weaponizing it against perceived political adversaries.
On the contrary. If elected, Anne will use her power and office to serve all County residents by fixing problems – not making them. Her planned improvements include, e.g., better addressing fraud. Other County Recorder offices in Arizona and elsewhere have already launched a free “Title Alert” system, e.g., Maricopa County.
We can too. Yet as of this writing, it has not happened in Cochise County.
It would go a long way to fixing the fraudulent conveyance of empty lots, e.g., which has been a real problem here. The free program works by monitoring documents recorded with the County Recorder’s office and notify participating subscribers via email when a document is recorded in a specific individual’s name and/or business name. It would only apply to documents recorded after sign up.
Maintaining a current email for notification would be the sole responsibility of the subscriber.
Creative problem-solving is what our County – and Country – need. Anne will work hard to creatively fix our shared problems.