Counting early votes could leave some Arizona races hanging for days

NOTE: ADDS dropped first reference to Hansen in penultimate graf.

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By MIKE MARTINEZ and ANDREW J. SHAINKER
Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX (Friday, Oct. 31) _ Early voting is at an all-time high in Arizona, and that could leave some races undecided for days as county officials tally stacks and stacks of ballots that won’t be counted election night.

In Maricopa County alone, a record 823,000 people _ almost half of those registered to vote _ requested early ballots. Of those, 512,000 had been returned by Thursday.

How long it will take to resolve close races depends on when and how the remaining 311,000 voters in Maricopa County _ and their counterparts in counties across Arizona _ turn in their early ballots. It also depends on how much counties must contend with provisional ballots, those involving people whose addresses and other information must be verified.

Arizona has seen days of post-election counting in recent years, especially in Maricopa County, which had more than a quarter million ballots to count after the 2006 general election. It’s left some races hanging, such as the one in which Democrat Harry Mitchell ousted U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., in 2006, and Janet Napolitano’s narrow victory over Republican Matt Salmon in the 2002 governor’s race.

“We are hoping that we can count all the votes in time for Thanksgiving,” joked Donna Kish, the administrative assistant for Maricopa County Elections Director Karen Osborne.

Voters are allowed to drop off early ballots at polling locations on election day. Those must be verified before they are counted, and that’s a key reason why vote-counting can go on long after election day.

“It’s very time-consuming,” Kish said.

Pima County, Arizona’s second-largest, sent 230,653 early ballots, of which 151,929 had been returned by Thursday, said F. Ann Rodriguez, the county recorder.

William J. Dixon, a professor and department head of the University of Arizona’s political science department, said the lengthy process feeds a perception that elections aren’t being run well.

“I suspect people are losing confidence in government to successfully run elections,” he said.

Dixon also said the news media’s election-night coverage leads people to believe that vote-counting is going faster than it really is.

“Election numbers are thrown up on television screens extremely fast,” Dixon said. “What this does, is create a false perception that votes are being counted rapidly, but in reality it could take days or weeks.”

Kim Fridkin, a professor of political science at Arizona State University, said another reason races remain unresolved is a reluctance by candidates in close races to declare victory or concede until all votes are counted.

“If it’s a really close race, I can understand why both candidates would want every vote to be counted,” she said.

In Coconino County, Election Administrator Patty Hansen expects her workers to have an easier time after election day than their counterparts in larger counties. The office issued 21,604 early ballots, of which about 5 percent likely will remain uncounted after election day.

“It’s not a stressful process,” Hansen said. “We have a five-member counting board who has helped with the counting before.”

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CAPTION FOR BC-CNS-LONG COUNT: Workers prepare for election night in the ballot-tabulation room at Maricopa County’s election headquarters in Phoenix. (Cronkite News Service Photo/Greg Lindsay)