Here’s what to expect as Maricopa County continues count of primary election ballots

PHOENIX – Maricopa County still had about 110,000 primary election early ballots to process as of Wednesday morning, according to Supervisor Bill Gates.

“We have to go through signature verification and that whole process, but we’ll see that roll out over the next few days. Then, just to be clear, by Friday we anticipate about 95% of all the votes cast will have been counted and reported,” Gates told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show the morning after Election Day in Arizona.

Gates said all of Tuesday’s in-person voting results for Arizona’s most populous county were tabulated and reported before election workers called it a night.

When will Maricopa County provide updates on the ballot count?

The county plans to report one update on Wednesday, he said.

“It’ll be later on the day. People should not be expecting a lot of numbers, and that’s actually because we had done such a good job of being caught up on the tabulation of those early ballots,” he said.

Most of the remaining early ballots, about 100,000, were dropped off at vote centers on Election Day. Gates said recorder’s office workers need to verify the signatures on those envelopes before the votes can be tabulated, which takes time.

“So it will be a small number today [Wednesday] that will be provided, but a larger number as we get into Thursday and then Friday,” he said. “But the cadence should be about one update, maybe two, but probably one update per day getting us closer to eventually getting to 100% of the votes cast.”

The Board of Supervisors will canvass the election and vote to certify the primary results on Aug. 12.

Gates, a Republican who didn’t seek reelection this year, said he was pleased following a relatively uneventful Election Day. Previous elections were marred by high-profile mishaps.

“I couldn’t be prouder of the work that people did at over 220 vote centers. Things went very smoothly, and a great preparation for that general election coming up in November,” he said.

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