How long do election results take in Arizona? What to know

Arizona, and specifically Maricopa County, has gained national attention in elections for taking multiple days to count all votes. This election will be no different.

Millions of Arizonans voted early for the 2024 general election. On Tuesday, thousands more head to the polls to fill out their two-page ballot, which includes important contests for president, senator and Proposition 139, which would enshrine abortion rights in the Arizona Constitution.

With about 2.5 million of the state’s 4.3 million registered voters, Maricopa County likely will swing the state in whichever direction it falls. At 8 p.m., when the county announces its first batch of tallied votes, we’ll know about 55% of the total ballot count in the county, according to Assistant County Manager Zach Schira.

But what about the rest?

How long does it take to count ballots in Arizona?

While Maricopa County elections have drawn scrutiny recently, it has always taken many days to process all the votes in the state. Since 2006, the county has taken an average of 13 days to report all its results.

That will be the case this year. In a press conference on Tuesday, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said it would take 10 to 13 days for Arizona’s official count to be finished.

“We would love to process all of them as quickly as possible,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said in a press conference on Monday. “But it's consistent with where we’ve been in the past.”

In 2020, it took 10 days for Maricopa County to complete its results; in 2022, it took 13 days. Over the last nine election cycles and 18 years, the quickest the county processed all ballots was eight days, in 2014. The slowest was 17 days, in 2008.

It could take well into next week to determine the full results, but we’ll likely get a sense of election winners before then. On Monday, Richer recounted his experience waiting for results for his position in 2020.

“I know that when I won my election in 2020, it was eight days after Tuesday, Election Day, when that became something of a certainty,” he recalled.

Why does it take so long for Arizona to count ballots?

It’s always taken this long. The only thing that’s changed is Arizona became a swing state.

In 2012, Republican U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney won Maricopa County by 10.7 points in the presidential election. Four years later, Donald Trump won the county by just 2.8 points, according to USA Today data. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden flipped the county with a 2.2-point margin. Biden won the state by only 0.3 percentage points.

When margins were larger, it was easier for news organizations to call races before all votes were counted. Now, more votes must be tallied before making those predictions.

How Arizona runs elections also contributes to the state’s deliberateness when counting votes. Arizona votes heavily by mail, and while ballots returned before Election Day get counted, mail ballots dropped off on Election Day — numbering in the hundreds of thousands — must go through signature verification and be tabulated.

Other factors that affect how long it takes to count votes are the county’s increasing population, a two-page ballot in 2024 and new state legislation.

The county has gained 96,830 new residents since 2020, according to USA Today. That means more ballots to process, and each ballot is double the normal length. The county has a two-page ballot for the first time since 2006, which officials say could take in-person voters 15 to 30 minutes to complete. That leads to longer voting lines and tabulation times.

A new Republican-backed law that went into effect in February requires poll workers to count the number of early ballots dropped off at a polling location on Election Day before they can deliver them to Maricopa County’s counting facility to be signature-verified and tabulated. Because of that extra step, results will ce delayed.

Still, Maricopa County election officials are expecting the majority of ballots to be counted within the first 24 hours. So while it may take longer than voters want, officials such as Schira say they’re working as quickly as possible.

​​“It’s important to remember here in Arizona our races are extremely close and still might take a few days for those immediate races,” Schira said in a press conference on Monday. “We ask you to be patient. Let us do our jobs.”