Inside Arizona Politics: Voters’ indecision leading to slow early-ballot returns

PHOENIX - The state’s most populous counties - Maricopa and Pima - are reporting slower-than-normal early ballot returns heading into Tuesday’s primary election.

Voters in those counties are waiting to cast more than half of the 760,000 early ballots that hit mailboxes for several likely reasons: Competitive primaries are leading to indecision, voters are turned off by negative campaigning, and the rise of independent voters, who by definition are disenchanted by the two major parties and tend not to vote as often in primary elections.

As of Friday afternoon, about 47 percent of the 601,299 early voters in Maricopa County returned their ballots, according to the recorder’s office. This is below the typical 60 percent or so of those voters who normally turn in those ballots – though election officials expect early ballot returns to be about normal by Election Day. Voters just seem to be holding on to those ballots until the last minute. Early ballots went out July 29.

In Pima County, the percentages are almost identical. That county recorder’s office reported Friday that about 47 percent of its 158,835 early voters returned ballots. And Pima County usually sees close to 70 percent of its early ballots turned in by Election Day.

Both major parties have contested primaries at almost every level of office – from U.S. Senate to four hotly contested congressional races spread across the state to down-and-dirty contests in attorney general , Maricopa County attorney and a number of legislative races.

And much of the campaigning has been downright negative, especially in recent weeks since early ballots hit mailboxes.

“Some of the ads have been clearly nasty,” said Chris Roads, chief deputy recorder in Pima County. “That has a tendency to turn people off.”

In social psychology, this is called “cognitive dissonance,” said Arizona State University professor and pollster Bruce Merrill. When people are under a lot of conflict, they “escape the field” or tend not to vote, he said.

Voter registration in Arizona has jumped big time over the last two years, adding more than 300,000 people to the rolls.

It’s the spike in independent voters that’s gotten the most attention. Independents now make up 31 percent of the voting population in Arizona. In the last two years alone, 200,000 people have registered as independents.

That says a lot about slow early-ballot returns, Merrill said.

“Many of the people who have left the two-party system are pretty alienated. You tend not to participate in the primary,” he said of independents.