Maricopa County unofficial results were updated at approximately 7:15 p.m. on Wednesday night, and the latest batch was good news for Democrats, as they broke slightly for Democratic candidates, leaving Katie Hobbs with a small but growing lead over Kari Lake and a larger lead for Sen. Mark Kelly over challenger Blake Masters.
The ballots included in the update were early ballots received over the weekend.
How is it possible that it took nearly all day for Arizona to count about 4% of the vote? Our election system in AZ is a national joke.
— Jason Bedrick (@JasonBedrick) November 10, 2022
Updated results show 1,136,849 Maricopa County voters cast a ballot, which represents 46.68 percent of total eligible voters. In addition, 129,000 early ballots were verified on Wednesday, which will be sent on to ballot processing on Thursday.
There are an estimated 400,000-410,000 remaining ballots. Below is the breakdown:
- Estimated Election Day ballots to be counted: 17,000
- Estimated early ballots left to process and tabulate: 239,116
- Estimated number of early ballots left to verify: 143,779
- Estimated provisional ballots left to research: 7,885
17K Ballots Rejected At Polls Due To Maricopa County Failure Will Be Counted
The Elections Department says it will do another update of unofficial results daily.
Also on Wednesday, the Maricopa County political party chairs completed the statutorily required hand count audit draw, to randomly select the early ballot batches (5,000 ballots) and Election Day voting locations (2% of sites) to be hand counted by bipartisan boards appointed by the political parties. The results of the hand count are compared to the tabulation results as another check on the ballot count. The Hand Count Audit will begin Saturday.