Elections chief assures Arizona voters all ballots will be counted

PHOENIX — Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs says there’s no need to call the state’s election office to find out if your ballot has been counted.

“This is the process. We are doing it according to the law and those ballots are going to be recorded. Nobody needs to worry about that,” Hobbs told 92.3 FM’s Arizona’s Morning News on Thursday.

Hobbs explained that the elections office can’t tell a voter if their ballot has been counted or not because there is no identifying information on the ballot.

“There is absolutely no reason anyone should be calling right now to make sure their ballot was counted right now because we can’t tell you,” Hobbs said.

The state’s top election official added that under 450,000 ballots still remain to be counted, most of which are early ballots that were dropped off on Monday and Tuesday. Of those, 282,000 are from Maricopa County.

Hobbs said that Maricopa County is currently pacing around 100,000 ballot tabulations per day, so there is still “a couple more days” of counting left.

The county’s elections office will provide updates on Maricopa County’s ballot count each day at 7 p.m. until all votes have been tabulated.

“All the ballots that are deemed to be cast by eligible voters,” Hobbs said. “If you voted in person and they didn’t give you a provisional ballot, you voted a ballot and your ballot is going to be counted.

“If you sent your ballot in the mail and you verified that it was received and signature verified, you are going to be counted.”

The Associated Press projected Democrat Joe Biden winning Arizona shortly after election night following analysis of ballots cast statewide concluded there were not enough outstanding votes to allow President Donald Trump to catch up.

Biden’s lead was narrowing as of early Thursday, according to unofficial results from Hobb’s office.

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