10 November, 2018

Why Does It Take So Long To Count Ballots?

Many people across Arizona, in the media, and across the United States are wondering why it takes so long to count ballots. So we wanted to take the time to explain the process.

In Arizona, there are 15 elected County Recorders and their elections divisions tabulate the ballots and upload them to the Secretary of State’s website.
The Secretary of State’s only role in this process is to display the results once they are uploaded by each county.

One of the major reasons it takes time to count ballots is that there are hundreds of thousands of early ballots dropped off at the polls on election day – approximately 320,000 statewide this time. The counties are currently working to verify the signatures on each and every one of those early ballots before they can be tabulated. Once the county election officials verify the signature on each of those ballots (which is no small task!), they then make sure that a voter didn’t cast an early ballot AND vote in person at a polling location. All of these processes take a little bit of time and is done to ensure that voters can trust the outcome of their elections.