Maricopa County posts final vote counts, AG race set for automatic recount

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) — The Maricopa County Elections Department says it has finally completed counting ballots, nearly two weeks after Election Day. Monday afternoon, the county announced it had completed counting a total of 1,562,758 ballots cast in this year’s midterm.

Many races had already been called, but the Attorney General race narrowed even more. Democrat Kris Mayes holds only a 510-vote lead over Republican Abe Hamadeh in the unofficial results, and that race will now go to an automatic recount since it’s within the 0.5% margin. That will begin sometime after the election is certified on Dec. 5.

Mayes released the following statement on the election recount:

In the governor’s race, the final results show Katie Hobbs had 17,116 more votes than Kari Lake. There won’t be a recount in that race since they were separated by 0.66%.

Maricopa County was the last county in the state to complete counting. The county says the number of ballots cast exceeded the average of 56.3% going back about 50 years.

But there’s still outcry about voting issues which the Communications Director for the Maricopa County elections department, Megan Gilbertson, says they’re trying to address. “It was not tabulators. It was printers. So the printers in about two locations on election day were printing out the timing marks on the outside of the ballot too light to be read by the tabulator,” she said.

Gilbertson says voters experiencing printing problems could drop their ballot into a secure door. She says every ballot was counted, and there were no errors. But that didn’t stop claims of fraud. “Some of the people are claiming that their ballot wasn’t counted. But they are looking at their voter history on our Be Ballot Ready Dashboard rather than their ballot status. Voter history is for your past elections and status is current,” said Gilbertson.

Gilbertson says that Maricopa County has a 600-page elections procedure manual that was followed, but there were still admittedly issues for day of voters.

Tap/click here to see statewide results. See Maricopa County results here.

Each county must now canvass to finalize the results of the election by Nov. 28. The recounts will begin the first week of December and should be finalized before Christmas.

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