Maricopa Official: Vote Counting Efforts Will Spill into Next Week

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates told CNN Thursday that vote tabulations in the county will carry over into next week.

Gates spoke with CNN’s Sara Sidner live on air just after 11:00 a.m. local time and noted that there were some 400,000 remaining ballots to be tabulated in Maricopa, including 290,000 early ballots that were dropped off on Election Day.

Sidner asked when he believed all the votes would be counted.

“We will be going into next week,” he replied. “There’s some onesie twosies, again, pursuant to Arizona law, but I think that we’ll see the lion share here wrap-up early by next week.” 

Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer noted on Wednesday that some 275,000 early ballots were dropped off on election day in addition to 17,000 in-person Election Day ballots that were not read by tabulators and submitted through secure boxes at polling sites. It appears Gates combined the two totals in his estimate of the “290,000 ballots that were dropped off on Election Day,” though this is not confirmed. 

In 2020, voters dropped off 170,000 early ballots on the day of the election, over 100,000 less than what was submitted Tuesday, as the Hill reported. Around 1:00 p.m. ET, Wednesday, Richer said that his office began the signature verification process of the 275,000 early ballots submitted on Election Day earlier that morning, adding that once completed, they would be sent over to the Maricopa Board of Supervisors for tabulation.

Another 86,000 ballots were received on “Friday, Saturday, and Sunday” and had already been verified and sent to the board for tabulation, he noted Wednesday. Richer said an additional 50,000 early vote ballots submitted Monday would also be sent to the board sometime Wednesday.

Though Gates noted that tabulation efforts will spill into next week, Archer reported that Maricopa and Pima County “Will do larger drops sometime this evening.” He added that rural vote results from rural counties were expected throughout the day. Archer later tweeted that the county confirmed Thursday night’s ballot drop “does not include any election day dropoffs.”

Maricopa County Communications Manager Matt Roberts told Breitbart News via email that results that will come Thursday night “will include early ballots received on Monday, Sunday and some of Saturday.”

He added that the nearly 300,000 Election Day drop-off ballots results “are likely to start being reported tomorrow.”

As of 5:28 p.m. ET Thursday, the New York Times estimated 70 percent of the total vote had been reported, including 73 percent of the Maricopa vote.