Chaun Copus of Elgin has voted in every election since she turned 21. Which was 66 years ago. For 25 of those years, she’s been voting by mail, as she is disabled.
Not for this year’s primary election. She never got a ballot.
“I was out of town over the July 4th weekend, and the mail-in ballots were mailed by the (county) recorder’s office on June 24,” Copus said. Back in town on July 7, there was no ballot in her box. Consequently, she contacted the recorder’s office, which canceled her initial ballot and issued a new one.
That one never came either.
Other Elgin residents are in the same ballot-less boat, including Jenny and Frank Whitehead and Sue Downing.
“I know of nine registered voters in Elgin who have not received their ballot,” Downing said.
Frank Whitehead has been voting by mail for 16 years. “We’ve moved three times during that span and never had any issues receiving ballots,” he said.
Through the ballot tracking system, Downing knows her ballot was sent, but it never arrived in her locked mailbox.
Which has led to some speculation. The Trump Administration has fiercely opposed voting by mail and issued at executive order calling on the U.S. Postal System to handle mail-in ballots only from voters on preapproved lists. However, a federal judge in Washington blocked the Postal Service from carrying out changes to its delivery of mail-in ballots following Postmaster General David Steiner’s testimony before the Senate in June that ballots would not be delivered in states that declined to hand over sensitive, unredacted voter records to the U.S. Department of Justice. Arizona was one of those states.
Santa Cruz County Recorder Anita Moreno noted that her office has been receiving calls from voters regarding undelivered ballots and is currently working with Postal Services processing and distribution center personnel in Phoenix to determine what happened to them. All ballots bear a tracking number, and Moreno is hoping information will soon be forthcoming. She would encourage anyone who did not get an early mail-in ballot to contact her office.
“We’re trying to get to the bottom of this because it is a little bit ridiculous,” said Moreno, who has been in office since 2023.
Whitehead said he plans on going to a voting center on election day — a first for him.
As for Copus, the county recorder is arranging for a registered Republican and a registered Democrat to hand-carry a ballot to her ranch. That ballot will be delivered to the county recorder’s office in Nogales in a sealed bag.
The Santa Cruz County Recorder can be reached at (520) 375-7999 or amoreno@santacruzcountyaz.gov
