Arizona enlists county employees to help tackle a surge of 2-page early ballots

PHOENIX (AP) - Employees for Arizona's most populous county have been reassigned to help election workers with an around-the-clock operation to process early ballots that are an unusually long two pages.

Election officials in Maricopa County must verify each voter's signature on early ballot envelopes and then remove the ballot pages so they can be prepared for actual counting. The county was unsure how long it would need to keep up the 24-hour operation, which kicked off Thursday night.

"As predicted, the first two-page ballot since 2006 has affected election administration, especially for the hard-working bipartisan boards who are separating the ballot pages from the affidavit envelopes," said Jennifer Liewer, Maricopa County deputy elections director for communications.

"In addition to election workers already on staff, county workers are stepping up to assist with the process," she said. Her statement did not specify how many workers were helping or which departments they were drawn from.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said earlier this week that ballots have been received from 1 million voters, a number approaching 40% of the nearly 2.6 million people registered.

Election officials in the presidential battleground state have urged people to vote early, or make a plan if they opt to cast their ballots in person on Election Day, which is Tuesday.

Early voting, particularly by mail, has long been popular in Arizona, where nearly 80% of voters submitted their ballots before Election Day in 2020, according to the Secretary of State's Office.

Arizona was the first of the presidential battleground states to open early in-person voting sites on Oct. 9, with a scattering of traditional voting centers.

Voters who received their ballots in the mail also can drop them off in person at polling sites or in a drop box.

Maricopa County mail ballots that arrive after Friday or that are dropped off at the polls generally won't be tabulated until after Election Day, a fact that means it is often more than a week before the results of tight races are known.

Arizona has 4.36 million registered voters as of the Oct. 7 deadline to vote in next week's election, according to a recent tally released by the Secretary of State's Office.

Many counties outside Maricopa also will use a two-page ballot. The exact length will vary even in a single county because the ballots incorporate local contests.

Election officials in counties around the state have warned of possible delays at polling places. Maricopa County officials have said vote-counting machines could jam if both pages of the ballot are not fed separately into the on-site tabulation machine.

Maricopa County's ballot alone will average 79 contests for local, state and federal races, as well as statewide ballot propositions.