All Maricopa County ballots should be counted by Tuesday

November 19, 2012

Two weeks after the polls closed, every ballot cast in Maricopa County from this month's presidential election should be counted by Tuesday. That's according to County Recorder Helen Purcell.

She says much of the delay was caused by the large number of provisional ballots that were cast. Purcell says 122,000 provisional ballots had to be validated before they could be counted and 59,000 of those were people who requested an early ballot but chose to vote at the polls instead.

"That's about 49 percent of all the provisionals, which is twice what we've seen in the past. Then there was 28,000 who were new resident ballots, people who had moved and not updated their voter registration, so those were the two biggest categories of that," Purcell said.

Purcell says presidential elections bring out many new voters who have not gone through the process before. She says even with the delays, her staff will have finished the count one day sooner compared to the 2008.