US Election 2024
Why is it taking so long to count Arizona’s election votes?
Days after Donald Trump was reelected as President of the United States, ballot counting is still going on in Arizona.
Donald Trump may have already been elected ahead of Kamala Harris as the 47th President of the United States, but ballot counting is still going on in some states several days after the election on Tuesday, November 5.
In addition to Nevada, Arizona is also having considerable issues sending its numbers through. Congressional, statewide and local races have still to be called in the Grand Canyon State, including the one for the U.S. Senate.
At the time of writing, the most recent update issued came late on Thursday, when it was revealed a number of counties, including Maricopa, Cochise, Pima, Yavapai and Yuma, still had at least 20% of ballots to count.
The issues, reports Votebeat, are wide-ranging.
What ballot counting issues are Arizona counties experiencing?
In Maricopa and Pima Counties, a longer two-page ballot is said to be the root of the problems, with officials simply requiring more time to take the ballots out of the envelopes, unfold them and inspect them.
In addition to that, in Maricopa County, almost 275,000 mail ballots had still to go through the first step of verifying the voter signature on the outside of the envelope by Thursday evening.
Counting in Cochise County has been delayed by mechanical issues related to tabulators, the machines used to register, process and count votes. In Yavapai and Pinal Counties, unclear marks made by voters at polling places are reported to have slowed the whole process down.
Votebeat stated that around 40% of ballots in Yuma had still to be counted by Thursday evening, but no reason was given as to what had caused the delay.
When is the deadline to fix voting errors in Arizona?
Under state law, the deadline for fixing errors (usually related to mismatched or missing signatures on ballots) is on Sunday (November 10), although voting rights groups are pushing for that to be extended, insisting voters should have a five-day period to fix any signature-related issues after being informed of a problem.