Maricopa County projects 500,000 in-person votes for Tuesday

Maricopa County Elections officials said Monday that the shift from early voting to Election Day operations proceeded smoothly, despite heavy rainfall over the weekend. The department is now bracing for a surge of in-person voters on Tuesday.

Jennifer Liewer, the deputy elections director for Maricopa County, stated that the office has received more than one million ballots and has already tabulated approximately 950,000 of them. She projected that roughly 500,000 additional votes will be cast on Election Day. Liewer noted that in-person participation on Election Day typically accounts for 10% to 15% of the total votes cast in the jurisdiction.

The county is preparing for a turnout from a pool of approximately 2.6 million registered voters. Kate Brophy McGee, chair of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, said more than 4,000 poll workers will be on duty on Election Day. She urged the public to treat these workers with kindness and respect, describing them as neighbors and friends working to protect the right to vote.

Voting infrastructure expanded for this cycle. A total of 151 voting centers opened on Monday morning. On Tuesday, 254 centers will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., an increase from the 223 locations available in 2024. Liewer credited community members who offered their facilities to ensure as many in-person voting options as possible.

Scott Jarrett, the Maricopa County elections director, said the heavy rainfall did not hinder the transition to Election Day operations, with most locations opening on schedule. Two centers, Paradise Valley Community College and Sunset Canyon Elementary School, faced temporary closures due to power-related issues. Both sites reopened before noon on Monday. Jarrett said he does not know the exact cause of the outages, but Liewer noted that power companies are working to restore service quickly after historic storms.

Zach Schira, assistant county manager for elections and external affairs, said the county expects to release results updates twice on Election Day, in the early evening and late evening. Liewer cautioned that final results may not be determined until early next week. She said that if a race is close, media outlets may not call the winner until Sunday or Monday of the following week.

After polls close, teams will remove memory drives from tabulators, place them in tamper-proof packaging, and send them to the central counting facility. Schira said county roads to voting locations should be passable by late Monday. This includes roads in the Rio Verde Foothills that were washed out by weekend storms. Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a candidate for Arizona secretary of state, requested an emergency declaration to clear these flooded roads. Schira said the county is working with emergency management and attorneys on that request.

Local and federal law enforcement will be present near polling locations. Frank McWilliams, director of emergency management and security services, said the county will not place armed personnel visibly at voting locations. He said this decision aims to prevent the visible presence of security from disenfranchising some voters.