Early voting starts for November’s general election in less than three weeks. And, that means for Kevin Runbeck, it’s go time.
Runbeck owns Runbeck Election Services, which prints all of the ballots used in Maricopa and Pima Counties, as well as counties in other states, including Florida, California and Colorado.
The noise from the plant was so loud, we had to step into another room to actually talk.
Runbeck said he’ll print almost 10 million ballots for next month’s general election. He said there are a lot of steps between determining which candidates make the ballot, and it ending up in your mailbox.
From there, Runbeck said, the ballots are printed, they go to bindery, where they’re cut, folded and assembled and then to the mail room.
There, workers and computers match each ballot to its voters’ ID, print envelopes with both outbound and return address information, sort them, make a record of each ballot sent out and take them to the post office.
And, if you live in Maricopa County, when you mail your early ballot back, it comes here. Runbeck said while he prints ballots year-round, right about now is the busy season, as election officials send in their ballot layouts.
