General Election Goes Smoothly For Pinal County Elections Department

Florence, AZ - Pinal County Elections Director Gilbert Hoyos sat quietly in his office following Tuesday’s general election.  A look of relief etched on his face as he looked over polling numbers from various precincts.

“I talked with the staff in January and told them that we had nine months to prepare for what would be a huge election for this county,” Hoyos stated.  “We worked hard and prepared for the primary in September and yesterday’s general election.  The result was an election that went very smoothly.”

Hoyos credited a spirit of teamwork that goes on between his department and the Recorder’s Office.

“We are in constant contact with Recorder’s Office along with Early Voting and Voter Registration to make sure we have all of our bases covered,” Hoyos said.  “We also rely on the guidance we receive from the Board of Supervisors and county leadership.  We are all striving for the goal of making sure every registered elector who wants to vote gets the chance to cast a ballot.”

As he was looking over the results from Tuesday’s general election, Hoyos cautioned that the results are not final until the Board of Supervisors certifies them.

“So far we still have more than 3,000 early ballots that were dropped off at the polling locations to count and need to verify about 5,000 provisional ballots.  Hopefully we will have them done quickly.”

Hoyos said that the majority of voters turned out in the morning between 6:00 am and 10:30 am.  

“I guess they listened to what the media was saying about avoiding lines at the polls,” Hoyos said.  “Our phones were ringing off the hook for most of the morning and then quieted down in the afternoon.”

According to the Pinal County Information Technology staff, the Elections website received more than 50,000 hits from people checking in to see results.  The normal traffic volume is between 600 to 800 views.  The website’s polling place locator received 12,962 hits from people across the county.

Pinal County’s Citizen Contact Center kept busy as well, receiving a record number of calls from residents asking questions ranging from voting locations to times the polls were open.

The turnout for the election surprised the elections department staff.  While Hoyos said they expected a number in the upper 70 percentile range, the actual turnout was actually upper 60 percent to 70 percent.

“A lot of the credit to pulling another presidential election off smoothly goes out to the poll workers and troubleshooters,” Hoyos said.  “Our poll workers are some of the most diligent people out there.  They are trained to make sure election rules are followed.  Our troubleshooters are recognized as having one of the best systems in the nation by our election software support team.  We are again proud of the work they did to have everything ready for the voters.”

As the fact that another presidential election has come and gone for another four years sinks in for Hoyos, he reflects on the effort it took to make sure the day went well for all involved.

“The old saying is that Presidential Elections make or break you.  I’ve made eight so far and it’s been quite a ride.”