SCOTTSDALE — Early voting has launched in Arizona.
Fourteen vote centers opened Wednesday around Maricopa County for in-person voting, and mail ballots are going out to people on the Active Early Voting List.
Additional voting locations will open Oct. 23, Oct. 31 and Nov. 2. You can find a map of voting locations with wait times on the county’s website.
The last day to request a mail ballot is Oct. 23.
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If you’re mailing your ballot, you need to do so by Oct. 27. You can also take your ballot to a drop box or vote center.
If you drop your ballot off at a vote center, you can make sure your ballot is counted faster by showing ID.
“Once your ID is verified, that ballot will be stamped ‘ID verified,’ and then it bypasses signature verification and everything else and goes straight on into tabulation,” Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap told ABC15 last month.
Election officials say they hope the option, which is new this year, can speed up results.
Election workers otherwise verify a mail ballot by checking the signature on the green envelope against other signatures in your voter file, which can be a time-consuming process.
But Heap said his office has also revamped signature verification to make it faster.
“We've managed to cut the time that it takes for us to do signature verification after an election on those late ballots that come in from days down to hours,” he said.
Many voters drop off their ballots on Election Day – the so-called “late earlies.”
Because they need to be signature-verified, it can take days before those ballots are able to be counted. Heap promised it will go much faster this year.
“I'm confident we'll have all the late early ballots done and signature-verified by noon the following day after election,” he told ABC15.
Voters who drop off their mail ballots on Election Day can now also choose to tabulate them just like in-person voters, which could also speed up the counting.
Mail voters who want track their ballots can do so online at BeBallotReady.Vote. You can also sign up for text alerts on the website or by texting “JOIN” to 628-683.
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