Tomorrow marks one month until Election Day. Early voting begins in less than a week and next Wednesday, October 9, early voting locations open and mail-in ballots go out. It’s go time and I hope to provide you with nearly everything you need to know about the process.

Voting – Key Dates and Points

• Monday, October 7 – last day to register to vote. Make sure you are registered here.
• Wednesday, October 9 – Early ballots are mailed to voters signed up for the Active Early Voting List (AEVL). Look for your early voting ballot in the mail between October 10 and October 13.
• Wednesday, October 9 – Early voting centers open in all fifteen counties. Voters can go in person to vote. For a list of those centers click here.
• November 5 – Election Day. Polls are open 6:00 am to 7:00 pm. If you are in line to vote by 7:00 pm, you will be allowed to vote.

• Early Ballots. I highly recommend dropping off your early ballot at an early voting center as soon as you can. This will ensure it is counted and you can track it to verify it has been received. You can do that here.
  • If you choose to mail your early ballot, you must do so by October 28 to ensure it arrives in time. Mailed ballots that arrive after Election Day are boxed and NOT counted.
  • All early ballots must arrive in the respective county offices by Tuesday, November 5.
  • You can also track your ballot if you put your ballot in the mail by October 28.
  • The sooner we all vote, the sooner we will have results on election night as those returns are released typically at 8:00 pm on election night.

• Early Voting. If you are not on the Active Early Voting List to receive an early ballot by mail, you still may go to an early voting center. That center will verify your information then print you a ballot that you can fill out and turn in at that same time. For example, Maricopa County will open October 9 with 10 to 15 locations, with a gradual increase to about 240 voting centers on election day. You DO need to vote in your county of residence.

• Verification and Tabulation Process. Maricopa County follows the process outlined below. Other Arizona counties follow a similar process. I have confidence in the process that gets our ballots from the drop off locations to the processing center, verified, and counted. I’ll walk you through it.

• Whether you send your early ballot through the mail or drop it off at an early polling location or drop box, a bipartisan team picks it up from those locations, places the ballots in a secure box with tamperproof seals and brings them to the central processing location.

• The team logs the ballots and scans the bar code on the green return envelope. This allows you to track your ballot and it ensures each voter can only vote once. It’s important that you send your ballot in the green envelope assigned to you, and do not include more than one ballot (two pages in this election) in your green envelope.

• A picture is taken of the phone number and signature on the outside of the envelope for signature verification. Temporary workers from all political parties trained by FBI signature verification experts compare signatures with the voter’s last three signatures on file. Questionable signatures go through a second check against all the voter’s signatures on file. If still questionable, several steps are taken to reach the voter to verify the signature.

• The Recorder’s office has five days after the election to verify questionable signatures on early ballots turned in on Election Day. If the signature block is blank, staff will call the number on the green envelope and the voter has until 7:00 pm on Election Day to go to the Recorder’s office and sign the ballot. This is another reason why it’s important not to wait for Election Day to turn in your early ballot.

• Bipartisan ballot courier teams pick up the ballots from the drop off locations in a sealed transfer box, sign it, take it to the central facility where receivers sign off that the seals are still in place and the ballots are still in their green envelopes.

• Early ballots are tabulated right away but no result report is run until after polls close on Election Day.

1. The process involves bipartisan teams opening the envelopes together, checking for damage or spurious markings that could cause machine tabulation problems.
2. Bipartisan teams oversee county staff tabulating and signing off on each tabulation machine.

• All political parties select batches of ballots to hand count and check against the machine counted ballots to ensure they match. They must match 100%.

1. Any markings on a ballot other than a filled in oval go through an adjudication process to ensure clear intentions are counted.

• Voters sending in or dropping off early ballots are able to track that their ballot has been received, their signature verified, and more useful information. Maricopa County voters can use vote. This website also will give you your voter history and contact info for any other questions. Voters in all counties can go to the Secretary of State’s website my.arizona.vote or click here.

• By 8:00 pm on Election Day, about 60-65% of results likely will be tabulated and posted.

• Election Day Voting. For many, if not most Arizona voters, the ballot is two pages long, front and back.
  • Mail-in ballots dropped off at a voting center on Election Day are not picked up until after the polls close and all voters have finished and left. The mail-in ballots are deposited in a locked box at the voting center by the voter, and they are picked up and transported to the county processing center in a secure box with tamper-proof seals by bipartisan teams. When the secure box arrives at the county processing center, the tamper-proof seals are inspected and bipartisan teams begin the signature verification process and tabulation as previously described.

• If you plan to vote on Election Day, November 5, it could take a while to vote at the polls. Maricopa County plans to have more voting locations and more voting booths than were available in 2022. Check wait times, updated about every 15 minutes, here.

• For Maricopa County, voters can contact the Maricopa County Recorder’s office with any Election Day problems or questions by calling 602-506-1511 or emailing voterinfo@Risc.Maricopa.Gov

• For other counties, you can go here to find your county recorder’s office and contact information.

• For Maricopa County, click here to get involved in the election process and help.

Some Things to Remember

• Ballot harvesting is illegal in Arizona. The only ballots you are allowed to drop off are your own or your family members’ ballots, or for people for whom you are a caretaker.

• If you receive a ballot for someone that no longer lives at your address, mark it on the outside of the outer yellow envelope and put it back in the mail. That will begin the voter inactive status process.

Avoiding Problems

• To avoid the breakdown of voting machines as experienced in the 2020 election, the county replaced every printer with brand new ones.

• Arizona’s all paper ballots avoid possible electronic problems experienced in other states and ensures a paper trail if necessary. There is also no connection between the tabulation machines and the internet. When officials report results, they leave the tabulation room and use a brand-new memory drive to download the results.

Voting

Send in your early ballot as soon as possible and track it here. Only walk it in or vote in person if you miss the October 28 mail-in deadline. If you want to stop the election related mail, phone calls and texts, then turn in your early ballot. Campaigns stop sending you election-related mail once you’ve voted.

Click here with any state election related questions.

If you need assistance voting, click here.

ICYMI:

• Watch here a compelling video from several Arizona pastors on Prop 139.
• Read here how a Virginia school district has to pay a teacher after wrongly firing him for not calling students by opposite pronouns.
• Be warned if you read here about the raunchy books Scottsdale Unified School District Board President says parents want their children to read. WARNING: explicit language and graphic content in quotes from the books in the school library. Just knowing that says it all.