It is primary election day in Arizona and voters are heading to the polls to decide who will represent each party in an array of important elections from the federal to the state and local level.
Voting sites are open across the state from 6 a.m. until 7 p.m. tonight. Voters can also drop off their early ballots at those sites as well. In Maricopa County, there are 223 vote centers open today, and registered voters can cast a ballot at any of them.
So far, things seem to be going smoothly at the polls — but that hasn’t always been the case in Maricopa County. Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates joined The Show from the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: So tell us first just what things are like there this morning. Things seem to be running smoothly, a little different than last time around in 2022.
BILL GATES: Yeah. Things are moving smoothly. Like you said, we have over 220 vote centers that are open across Maricopa County, and we’ve already had thousands of people who’ve checked in to vote. So we’re off to a great start.
GILGER: Thousands of people. Any lines yet? Is it busy? A little too busy?
GATES: No, not at this point. People have been able to get in and out pretty quickly. And so we always encourage people, if you can get there early, check that off your to-do list for the day and go on with the rest of your day. So we’re just so grateful for all of the thousands of employees and temporary workers who help us to run these elections in Maricopa County.
GILGER: So last time around, in 2022, we were seeing issues with about 20% of ballot tabulator machines across Maricopa County. Talk about the preparation that county officials have gone through to be ready for today. The stakes are really high. All eyes are definitely on elections here because of issues in the past, as well as the rise of election misinformation.
GATES: Yeah it is. We do understand that the eyes of the country, if not the world are on us, on Maricopa County elections. And as far as it relates to some of the issues that we had at some vote centers with the tabulators back in 2022, the issue was really related to the printers, and some of the printers were printing too light, too faint to be picked up by the tabulators.
That’s why my colleagues and I on the Board of Supervisors have committed $9 million to purchasing new printers so that we don’t have a repeat of that issue. And, like I said, things are going smoothly this morning.
GILGER: One thing I’ve heard a lot from election officials heading into this election is that there’s no such thing as a perfect election, right? There’s not no such thing as no problems. What if things go wrong today? How will you handle it? Are there contingency plans?
GATES: So you’re absolutely right. There is no such thing as a perfect election, particularly in a county of our size, the fourth largest county in the country. But we are ready for various contingencies, whether it has to do with the power going out, whether it has to do with issues with any of our machines. Or if there are any weather related issues too, they could have an impact.
We’re ready for whatever is going to come. And here’s the other thing, too, is that we have put a premium on communicating. So if people have any concerns, any questions at all, we encourage them to go to maricopa.vote. That is the trusted source for information on whether it is where the vote centers are located, or if people have any questions about what identification they need to bring if they want to vote at the polls today.
GILGER: This is the first primary election, I think, where vote centers are required to hand count the number of mail-in ballots that are going to be dropped off at each voting location today. We mentioned folks can do that today, on election day. How might that affect things?
GATES: So you’re right, this is the first time that we have been required to do that. And so for your listeners: The state Legislature passed a law, the governor signed it, which says that all of — so we’re not talking about the people who vote in person on Election Day, but instead the people who drop off their mail-in ballots on Election Day.
At the end of the day, after 7 p.m. when everyone has voted in person, we then have to count up the number of green envelopes that were dropped off at that vote center. So of course, we’re going to comply with the law and do that.
The reality, and people need to understand that that’s an additional job that’s now been given to our workers out there. So it could delay. We have to complete that process of counting all those green envelopes before the memory cards — which have the votes that have been cast at that vote center — we have to wait until we’re done counting up all those envelopes before bipartisan teams can bring those memory cards into our central tabulation center, where those memory cards are then put into the server, which is not connected to the internet.
So bottom line is it might slow down the results after the initial 8 p.m. results, maybe just a little bit.
GILGER: Right. So talk about the timeline here in terms of when we can expect results to start coming. Polls close at 7 p.m. You said 8 p.m. first results will roll out. How long might it take to get everything counted?
GATES: Yeah. So we will have, right around 8 p.m. we will be reporting the lion’s share of the early votes that have been coming in since July 3. So that’ll be a big number that will be reported. Then from that point throughout the evening, at various times, we will be adding the votes in that have been cast today.
So that’ll be going on into the night, into the wee hours of the morning. But we will continue to update those totals until we have tabulated all the votes that are being cast today. Then, over the next few days, we will add additional — around 5 p.m. or something like that each day — we will be reporting the additional results that will be coming in.
Our anticipation is it will have about 95% of the total votes will be reported by this Friday.
GILGER: By Friday. All right. Lots to watch for their Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates joining us from the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center. Thank you so much for coming on, I appreciate it.
GATES: Thanks for having me.
