Friday is last day for Arizonans to request early mail-in ballots

PHOENIX – With less than two weeks to go before the midterm election, Friday is the last day for Arizona voters to request an early ballot by mail.

Requests can be made through county recorder’s offices by 5 p.m. Phoenix-area voters can do so online at Request.Maricopa.Vote or by calling 602-506-1511.

Voters who want turn in their ballots through the mail must do so by Wednesday.

“They should turn that around and get it back in the mail by Halloween to make sure that early ballot is going to be received by the county recorder by 7 o’clock on Election Day,” Matt Roberts, spokesman for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, told KTAR News 92.3 FM this week.

Ballots that arrive after that time won’t be counted, Roberts said.

If you miss the deadline to request or mail a ballot, or if you prefer to vote in person and don’t want to wait for Election Day on Nov. 6, you can stop by any of Maricopa County’s voting centers to cast early votes.

A list of the centers’ locations and hours is available at the recorder’s website.

Voters can track their early ballots by texting “join” to 628-683, Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes said in a press release. Notifications will be sent when ballots are sent out, received, verified and sent to be counted.

Early voting started Oct. 10, and so far the numbers are favoring Republicans, according to state election officials.

Secretary of State Michele Reagan told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Arizona Morning News on Thursday that early ballots have been coming in at a record pace.

Garrett Archer, Reagan’s data analyst, said Thursday on Twitter that 761,000 ballots had been submitted in the state, 240,000 more than this time in 2014.

The breakdown of returned ballots, Archer said, was 44 percent Republican, 33 percent Democrat and 23 percent classified as “other.”

.@SecretaryReagan #AZ early ballot update for 10/25: 761k in (est. 35% of all votes). Parties: GOP 44.2%, DEM 32.8%, OTH 22.5% (+11.4 R). Estimate for women increases to 49.7%. Median age drops to 56, mean drops to 56.5. https://t.co/OU4JNhQPf4

— The AZ Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) October 25, 2018

According to numbers released last week, 35 percent of the state’s 3.7 million registered voters are Republicans and 31 percent are Democrats.

Reagan cautioned against reading too much into the party breakdown of early ballots.

“But of course we don’t know what the independents are voting,” she said.

“That’s why general elections are so exciting, because the independents play such a big role.”

Women generally vote at a higher rate than men, Reagan said, but that hasn’t happened so far.

“They’re at 49 percent, so we think there’s a lot of women holding ballots out there,” she said.

Reagan said the average age of voters, which is usually around 60, has been decreasing with each passing day of early voting.

“It currently stands at 56 years old,” she said.

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Nailea Leon contributed to this report.

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