The Pima County elections crew is still sorting through a final pile of ballots, but while we’re waiting on that, we can share a few fun facts about voting patterns.

A total of 309,700 early ballots were mailed to voters. Of those, just 229,359 were returned, according to the latest figures from county spokesman Mark B. Evans. While Evans cautions that the number of returns may creep up a bit after more ballots are verified, it’s pretty close to an accurate count. That means that only 74 percent of those who received early ballots sent them back in—a significant drop from general elections previous years. In 2012, 81 percent of the ballots were returned; in 2010, the number was 80 percent. In 2008, it was 91 percent and in 2006, it was 88 percent.

This tells us that many voters have been signed up for the Permanent Early Voter List by campaigns but had no interest in actually voting this year. Why not? That’s an excellent question that deserves to be explored. Maybe they were turned off by the campaign ads (in which case, the negative ads did what they were supposed to do), maybe they just forgot, maybe they lost their ballots and had to cast them at the polls. It will be interesting to look into how many of the unengaged voters were Democrats, Republicans or independents.

Whatever the answer, the majority of voters still prefer voting early. A total of 58,488 voters cast ballots at the polls on Election Day, compared to the 229,359 who cast early ballots. So close to 80 percent of the ballots cast were early ballots.

Correction: This post originally had an incorrect number of early ballots returned.

This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2014.

Getting hassled by The Man Mild-mannered reporter

9 replies on “Pima County Election Fun Facts: Most Voters Prefer Early Ballots, But One Out of Four Didn’t Send One In”

  1. I had an unsolicited call yesterday evening if I had mailed in my early ballot and I said yes. Asked who is calling and they hung up the phone.

  3. Just the return rate loses 33% of the ballots. I hope they discontinue this and go back to show ID at the polls.

    Wasted money and delayed results is all we are getting.

  5. Thanks for catching the math goof. I had initially written up the draft with just the number of early ballots that were mailed in and neglected to include the ones that were dropped off on Election Day. I realized my original mistake and recalculated before publishing, but neglected to update the number of ballots returned in my draft before publishing. Fixed now.

  7. In other states, people have to put their own postage on their mailed ballots. How do their return rates compare to ours?

  8. I do not feel early voting is right except for military personel overseas. Once again the voting counters in Pima Cty is making sure that puppet barber gets re=elected.

  9. There is no doubt that the National GOP attack ad strategy was to discourage and antagonize the average voter so that only their core constituency would show up. It’s tough to fight such mean-spirited and unpatriotic people but we will remember them in two years. How’d that extra scoop of ice cream work for you, Arizona?

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