Why Election Day results will be delayed in Arizona

The results of ballots cast at Maricopa County polling places will be delayed because of a Republican-backed change in state law. This delay could lead to false claims as the country awaits the outcome of the presidential election campaign.

The expected slowdown is due to a new state law enacted in February that requires poll workers to count the number of envelopes dropped off at voting locations before transmitting the results to the central counting site. This is just an initial count of the number of election envelopes. The votes on these ballots will be counted later after the voter signatures on the ballot envelopes are verified.

Still, the task will take time. In past elections, more than 1,500 mail-in ballots were cast in busy locations on Election Day.

Maricopa County — one of the few closely watched swing counties in a later time zone — will not provide an estimate of when officials expect polling place results.

“Once I enter a time period, I will be held accountable for it until the end of time,” said county elections spokeswoman Jennifer Liewer, adding: “The new requirement to count affidavit envelopes is too big a factor to be a factor.” to make predictions.”

During the primary election, most polling places in Maricopa did not report their results until 10:55 p.m., with the final reporting of polling place results occurring at 1:15 a.m. For a few reasons, results in the upcoming election are likely to be announced later.

On the one hand, it is expected that voter queues will continue on election day even after the polls close at 7:00 p.m. local time and people waiting in line at that time will be eligible to vote; There were only a few lines during the primary. Second, the ballot paper is much longer than in the past – two sheets, front and back – meaning those voters who are late in line will take longer to make their choice. Poll workers must wait until all voters have finished and the site is closed before they begin counting envelopes that have been dropped off.

Republicans typically urge election officials to release results as quickly as possible. But Republican lawmakers pushed for the new counting requirement to ensure that the number of mail-in ballots cast is documented at each location before the ballots are taken to the central counting facility.

They inserted the measure into major legislation that Democratic and Republican lawmakers were working on to shorten Arizona's election schedule to meet federal deadlines, even though the counting requirement has nothing to do with that schedule. Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, signed the bipartisan bill on Feb. 9.

Upon hearing that the requirement will delay results on election night, Republican Rep. Alex Kolodin, who led his party's advocacy for the measure, said, “This small delay will give voters more time to toast the improved security of the voting system.” “ .”

But some voters didn't feel that way in November 2020, when counting was still ongoing the day after Election Day. At that time, Donald Trump's supporters crowded in front of the voting center in Maricopa County and called on workers to stop counting the ballots. Since then, including last week, GOP leaders — and Trump supporter Elon Musk — have said the long count in the county suggests incompetence or fraud.

It is unclear when media organizations will have enough information to determine who won the presidential contest in the state. A large portion of the state's voters wait until Election Day to cast their mail-in ballots at a polling place. (In the 2022 election, about a third of voters in Maricopa County did so, or about 290,000 people.) These ballots are counted only after the voter's signature is verified, which happens in the days after Election Day.

In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump in Arizona by around 10,000 votes. In that election, the Associated Press called the state's presidential contest for Biden just before 1 a.m. However, in 2022, the AP waited until six days after the election to call the gubernatorial race for Katie Hobbs, who ultimately won by 17,000 votes.

What order are Arizona's election results listed?

Arizonans vote in a variety of ways over a period of weeks – by mail, by ballot box, early in person or in person on Election Day. But their votes are tabulated in a specific order after the polls close and the results are reported.

The first available results from Arizona are counts of all early ballots cast before Election Day up to a certain point. Typically, these results include all in-person early and mail-in ballots received through the weekend before the election.

Counties typically upload these early voting results on election night at 8:00 p.m.

The next round of results come from voters who voted in person on Election Day.

In many counties, including Maricopa County, voters enter their completed ballots directly into on-site counting machines. Results are stored on portable USB drives within the devices and securely transmitted back to a central counting facility where they are uploaded to a results computer.

For those counties that use on-site tabulation machines, the results will be available shortly after the USB sticks are delivered to the central counting facility. Maricopa County releases these results in batches as they arrive from locations throughout the county. And all Arizona counties are aiming to release all Election Day results before workers leave for the day.

According to ABC 15 data analyst Garrett Archer, who tracks election night results, the first polling place results were received in November 2020 at 10:15 p.m. In November 2022, Archer said results from a small number of sites were uploaded at 9:46 p.m., followed by a larger upload at 10:45 p.m

The district could not confirm the timing of results from previous years. For this year's August primary, after the new counting requirement took effect, results from a small number of locations near the central counting facility were uploaded at 9:30 p.m., with others at 10:55 p.m., according to Maricopa's Liewer.

At some locations during the primary, it took hours for the last voters to leave, for workers to count envelopes and for USB sticks to get to central counting facilities: The final round of in-person voting results were loaded at 1:15 am

After Election Day, the next publicly reported results come from ballots that were mailed and received by counties in the days immediately before the election. Typically, some of these results are released the following evening once voter signatures have been verified.

The last ballots to be counted are those that were mailed and received on Election Day or dropped off at polling stations or ballot drop boxes on Election Day. Typically, counties update results once a day until all results are available.

More staff, but also more last-minute coordination

The law passed this year brought other changes that could affect the timing of the publication of the results.

If workers flag a voter's mail-in ballot because of a signature mismatch, or if a voter casts a provisional ballot that requires additional information or documentation to be counted, Arizona law previously gave the voter five business days to fix the problem. With the new law, the legislature changed this to five calendar days for this election. This could help counties process and count all ballots more quickly.

In 2022, 99.2% of ballots in Maricopa County were counted at the end of the five-day grace period. It took 13 days for all ballots to be counted.

This year, Maricopa County has hired more employees to help verify signatures and count those last-minute votes. That seemed to help in the primary election. The final results were released just six days after the election. This was the fastest count achieved by the county in at least the last ten statewide primaries.

But the county also expects more last-minute mail-in ballots dropped off — 350,000 compared to 290,000 in November 2022.

In previous years, poll workers were not required to tally these cast ballots at the polling place, so it is unclear how many will arrive at the busiest locations this year.

In the primary election, 86,756 voters cast mail-in ballots at polling stations. Seven of 222 vote centers had cast more than 1,000 ballots, according to a Votebeat review of numbers released in the county, and most other vote centers had hundreds. At the busiest location, 1,855 ballots were cast.

The county estimates it will take 10 to 12 days to complete the counting of all ballots for the November election, about average compared to previous elections.

However, voters should expect the election to be called early unless the margin of victory is so small that an automatic recount occurs. The state is expected to certify final statewide results on Nov. 25.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at [email protected].