Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes: Polling Places Prep Going Well Ahead Of Election Day

By Lauren Gilger, Bret Jaspers
Published: Monday, November 5, 2018 - 12:03pm
Updated: Monday, November 5, 2018 - 5:51pm
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Alonso Parra/Maricopa County Recorder's Office
Adrian Fontes

With Tuesday’s general election day looming, all eyes are on political candidates — and also the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.

The elections department is looking to make up for a rocky primary in August.

In an audit released late last week, an outside consulting firm reviewed the Recorder’s Office preparations for Tuesday.

One of the firm’s recommendations was to lock in a specific schedule for setting up sites on Monday, and the audit said the Recorder’s Office planned to do this.

“We’re on track to make sure that we’ve got everything set up and good to go for voters tomorrow morning at 6 a.m.,” Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes said.

According to the audit, more than 450 polling places were scheduled to be set up between Sunday and Monday. The consulting firm that performed the audit, BerryDunn, declined an interview.

Where To Vote

There will be over 500 places to vote on Tuesday. Forty of them will be so-called Vote Centers, where anyone can cast a ballot regardless of where you live.

The rest of the locations are traditional neighborhood polling places. You must be assigned to that location in order to vote there.

Find your polling place by visiting locations.maricopa.vote.

MAP: Maricopa County Polling Places

Disinformation

Voters also should double-check their information to make sure they have the correct details. Fontes said his office has seen a few attempts to spread false or confusing voter information ahead of tomorrow’s election.

“There’s a variety of things that we’ve seen," he said. "For example, we saw a postcard that had the wrong election date on it. We’ve seen some tweets and some Facebook things. We’ve seen some text messages going out to groups of voters with disinformation on it.”

Fontes said his office is working with law enforcement to react to voter suppression efforts.

Polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. Identification is also needed to place a vote at a voting location.

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