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Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Politics UPDATED: Election 2010: What's Left To Count? An Estimated 38K Ballots in Pima County
Posted by Jim Nintzel on Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 11:32 AM
With just a few thousand votes separating winners from losers in Southern Arizona's congressional races, many folks are wondering how many ballots are left to count.
Well, Pima County officials are still trying to get a handle on that number.
Chris Roads of the Pima County Recorder's Office tells The Range that an estimated 25,000 early ballots were dropped off at polling places yesterday. Those ballots will be processed by the Recorder's Office by the end of the day and then sent over to the Pima County Elections Division for counting.
Then there are another 25,000 12,500 or so "provisional ballots." (See update, below.) These are ballots cast by voters who have moved or who requested early ballots and then decided to vote at the polls on Election Day or otherwise hit some kind of snag. Those take longer to process, since each one requires a brief investigation on a county worker's part. On average, each one takes about 15 minutes, says Roads.
The Recorder's Office, by law, has 10 days to wrap work on provisional ballots. Roads says it may take that long to sort through them all, even with staffers working on them from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day.
Similar mop-up operations are going on in the out counties.
We'll bring you updates—such as breakdowns between congressional districts—as we get them.
UPDATE: We've heard new numbers from Chris Roads: There were 25,300 early ballots dropped off at the polls and, according to the Division of Elections, just 12,500 provisional ballots. The Recorder's Office won't be sorting them out according to congressional district because that would slow down the primary job of processing them.
Comments (5)
Showing 1-5 of 5
Their own words condemn them. The absolute most basic function of government is counting the votes, and this is the best they can do.
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They would not have ended up with so many provisional ballots to count if they could update a persons address in a relatively short amount of time. I moved 13 months ago, updated my information online and filled out a change of address with the post office and dmv, and they have me as unaccounted for? So I filled out a provisional ballot, against my wishes, and left wondering, how long do they officially need to update their records.
Give the clerks them a break. They deserve our gratitude during elections.
Government bureaucracy is designed to be slow, methodical and deliberate. We trade efficiency and customer service for transparency, lots of structure and preoccupation with rules and procedure. This is why government bureaucracy works well for things like counting votes and assessing taxes, but is the absolute worst organizational choice for anything involving service delivery, like public schools or mental health services
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