Arizona Election Results Stalled: Long Ballots and Court Orders Create Counting Delays

Arizona is awaiting election results that were anticipated by Wednesday morning, as uncounted ballots from polling places on Election Day and a substantial backlog of early ballots from Maricopa County continue to delay the process.

Maricopa County’s unique two-page ballot has contributed to the slowdown. Election officials noted that the longer preparation time required to remove ballots from envelopes and lay them flat resulted in a backlog. As of Tuesday night, officials estimated approximately 700,000 early ballots still awaited processing.

Typically, counties release results from all precincts overnight; however, this year, due to delays in Pinal County and a court order extending voting hours in Apache County, results continued to trickle in on Wednesday. A tracker from the Secretary of State’s Office indicated that many counties still had precincts yet to report by 11 a.m.

Maricopa County initially announced that it would include early ballots received by October 29 in its first round of results released at 8 p.m. Tuesday. This was a deviation from the usual practice of counting all early ballots received up until the Friday prior to Election Day.

County Recorder Stephen Richer explained to Votebeat that the time taken to process the two-page ballots is nearly double the usual duration. The county has not faced such a lengthy ballot format in nearly two decades, straining resources further as they added a third overnight shift of ballot processors in a bid to alleviate the backlog.

Despite these efforts, Richer acknowledged that the timing of the additional resources was insufficient to catch up with the volume before the end of the week. The first-round results included about 1.1 million early ballots, with expectations for a total turnout of 2.1 million across the county.

Richer expressed optimism that ballot processing would largely conclude by the weekend, coinciding with the end of the cure period for voters to address any ballot issues. The county is expected to release results for early ballots dropped off at polling locations on Wednesday.

Additionally, Maricopa County managed to report all Election Day results for about 269,000 voters who cast ballots at polling stations by around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday. These results, which come directly from tabulation machines, were reported as soon as the memory cards from the machines were delivered to the central counting facility in downtown Phoenix.

A recent law mandating poll workers to count the number of early ballots dropped off before leaving their sites appears to have contributed to delays in final Election Day results. Other counties, such as Pinal, experienced their own issues, with only half of their precincts reporting results as of 8:45 a.m. Wednesday.

In Apache County, delays stemmed partly from a court order extending polling hours to accommodate voters affected by technical difficulties, extending voting at nine polling places well past the planned closure time.