Maricopa County election officials said Monday they expect every polling location to open on time Tuesday, even after a weekend of heavy rain, flooding and power outages complicated the final stretch before Election Day. Jennifer Liewer told voters the county is ready, and Kate Brophy McGee said the team has backup plans if something goes wrong.
The timing matters because the county is heading into one of its busiest voting days with federal observers preparing to monitor polling sites in Maricopa, Apache and Pima counties. Liewer said that is not unusual and said there is a good-faith effort to follow Arizona law at voting locations, but the presence of monitors has still drawn questions from Democrats and activist groups worried about interference with voting or ballot counting.
At Monday's news conference, officials said the weather did not disrupt the transition from early voting to emergency voting and Election Day, even though two polling locations were delayed by power outages before later opening. The county had received about 1 million ballots by Monday morning, and Liewer said most of those ballots had already been tabulated.
Officials also set out the scale of what is still ahead. The county expects about 250,000 voters to cast ballots in person on Election Day and another 250,000 to drop off ballots in person, with polls open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Liewer advised voters to check polling location wait times, have identification ready and research their ballots ahead of time.
The county is trying to project calm while answering a harder question behind the scenes: whether Election Day runs cleanly under the scrutiny of federal observers and the strain of a high-volume count. Maricopa County officials said they are prepared should any problem arise, and McGee said the office is ready to respond because obstacles will come.
