Thousands Of Arizona Ballots Left To Be Processed

The processing of ballots from last Tuesday’s General Election continues across Arizona. County recorders are expected to wrap up the processing of conditional and provisional ballots by the end of this week.

In Maricopa County, Arizona’s most heavily populated area, there are approximately 185,000 early ballots left to be processed and tabulated, as of Saturday at 5:00 p.m. While that seems like a large number, the Maricopa County Recorders Office had over 600,000 conditional and provisional ballots to process since last Tuesday.

In Pima County, the remaining 20,000 provisional ballots are expected to be ready for tabulation by Tuesday. A handful of conditional ballots (about 40) will be processed by Friday.

The counties’ boards of supervisors then must canvass the results before they become official.

With so few ballots remaining, the only races that may change in Pima County are the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board and the LD10 races. Rachael Sedgwick and Betts Putnam Hidalgo are battling for third place. A mere 200 votes separate the two women. While Sedgewick has a 200 vote lead, the votes have been trending in Hidalgo Putnam’s favor. In Arizona school board races, recounts are not automatically triggered. Those with the highest votes take the office.

In the LD10 race, Todd Clodfelter has won a healthy lead over incumbent Rep. Stephanie Mach and is a mere 41 votes away from leader Kirsten Engel. It is unlikely that Mach can overcome Clodfelter with the tabulation trending now in his favor.

In the LD18 race, Denise “Mitzi” Epstein has a comfortable lead over incumbent Reps. Jill Norgaard and Rob Robson. It is unlikely that Robson can overcome Norgaard’s edge.

In the LD28 senate race, Rep. Kate Brophy Magee has a slight edge over Rep. Eric Meyer.

In legislative races, a 50 vote difference between candidates will trigger an automatic recount.

Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan says, the delays are a result of a shift in voting patterns. She wrote on her blog this week:

“Arizona has more than 2.3 million voters who receive an early ballot and over the last few elections people have returned their ballots closer and closer to Election Day. Even this year, thousands were dropped off at the polls on Tuesday. The effect of this trend is that counties have a lot of ballots to process and tabulate after the election itself.

Early ballots that have yet to be counted fall into two groups: “early early ballots” and “late early ballots.” Early early ballots are ballots mailed to the USPS by November 2. Late early ballots are those delivered to the USPS after November 2 and/or dropped off at the polling place. While we don’t have specific information how they are divided, we believe most of the 600K are late early ballots.

The time consuming aspect of tabulating early ballots is verifying signatures on envelopes. The signature verification component of early voting is largely an unautomated task that requires people with specific handwriting analysis training. This process ensures the integrity of the election and prevents people from fraudulently signing another person’s ballot. While feeding ballots through the tabulation machines is fairly quick, signature verification takes time.”

Processing has been made difficult by Reagan, who has offered little guidance or assistance to county recorders. In fact, Reagan interrupted preparations by county recorders this month for the General Election by forcing recorders to implement a new campaign financing system. Reagan has also failed to update the elections manual, leaving recorders operating under outdated rules and procedures.

On December 5 the official canvass of the election results will be signed by Reagan. The Electoral College will be held on December 19. The most recent tabulation of the featured races are  below: