PHOENIX — November 1 marks the last day voters can mail their ballots for Arizona's General Election. The deadline ensures that the U.S. Post Office has time to receive the ballots and get them to the county election offices.
VOTING GUIDE: What you need to know to cast your ballot for the 2022 Arizona election
If you mail it after November 1, your ballot may still be accepted if it makes it to election officials. Arizona is not a postmark state, it is a receipt state, meaning election officials must have your ballot by 7 p.m. on Election Night, November 8.
If you are concerned that the USPS lost your ballot, you can check with the county recorder's office. The office should be able to tell you if it has been received. Most counties also have online tools to check.
If for some reason election officials have not received your mailed ballot, you can go in person to vote on election day.
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If you go in to vote because officials don't think they received your ballot, but it later does gets turned in, whichever vote was made first will be the one counted. This means that if you vote in person before the mail-in ballot is received, the mail-in ballot will become void.
Early ballots can always be turned in at a marked election drop box. Only county officials have access to these boxes. They send a bipartisan team of couriers to retrieve the ballots and bring them directly to the warehouse for processing.
For full 2022 Arizona election coverage, click here.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 675-thousand ballots of the 1.9 million mailed out in Maricopa County were returned.
"What I see right now is the Democrats are performing very similarly to 2018." Data Analyst Sam Almy of Uplift Campaigns says Democratic ballots outnumber Republican ballots by nearly 30,000.
But before anyone gets too excited, Almy cautions, Republican voting behavior has changed significantly.
"What's hard to tell is this behavior shift we saw in 2020 from the Republican Party where they started to reject vote by mail," Almy said. "This is our first midterm election where we're seeing this shift in Republicans preferring to go to the polls. So, it's a little bit hard to predict what's going to happen on that side."
A large turnout on Election Day may mean a longer than usual time in line at voting sites. "Do your homework. Read about what everybody stands for. Make your own opinion and just go from there," Katherine Gilman said.
If you don't intend to vote on Election Day, county officials recommend dropping off your ballot by Saturday at a ballot drop box. There are also 44 in-person voting locations across the county that are open now where you can also turn in your ballot.
