Comment PHOENIX — In Arizona, there is no such thing as “Election Day.” Locals know it as “Election Month,” a weeklong political extravaganza that begins in October and runs through mid-November, as election workers sift through hundreds of thousands of early ballots tucked inside green and white envelopes. In Maricopa County, home of Phoenix, the vote counting takes place inside a huge warehouse-like building downtown. Security officers monitor who comes and goes, and workers wearing blue latex gloves furiously sort through envelopes of ballots while ’80s pop and ’90s hip-hop blare. A recently released track: “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan. Nearby, through a maze of hallways and walls with maps of the nation’s second-largest electoral jurisdiction, a lobby that doesn’t usually see much action is now the nerve center of American politics. Television crews broadcast news of a complicated vote-counting process from this newly branded swing state to a worldwide audience. So many reporters are cramming in that there aren’t enough chairs. Some bring their own, while others fall to the floor. The attention is unprecedented in this county, which in 2020 was central to efforts by Donald Trump and his supporters to reverse the former president’s loss. Anticipating a whirlwind during the 2022 election, the county board and election officials have worked for months to try to set public expectations for how November’s results will play out. Even under the best scenarios, they repeatedly said, it could take up to 12 days to complete the ballot counting. It’s a time frame familiar to anyone who has worked in and around politics here, but one that many Republican candidates and party activists have called suspicious and unacceptable. At a time when Maricopa County needed a near-perfect election, some printers used to produce on-demand ballots failed at about a third of polling places on Election Day. The problems caused delays and fueled a viral spread of misinformation and accusations of malfeasance. Local leaders have noted that the vote counting process has not changed. But the nature of its politics he’s got. The fast growing and Maricopa County’s variation has turned from deep red to purple, making statewide contests more competitive than ever. “Here’s the thing. We have so many close races that everyone is still paying attention to Maricopa County,” Bill Gates, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board, told reporters crowding the lobby this week. “In those other states, like Florida , those fights were blowouts, nobody pays attention.” It’s not a criticism, he said, but “that’s how we do things in Maricopa County. We follow the law. Those are the laws put into place by the state legislature.” At a news conference Friday, Gates was direct and occasionally exasperated as he answered repeated questions about the state’s longstanding practices. “For people who have followed Arizona politics for many years, this is very, very common,” Gates said. “I know people are very anxious to get the results, but there is nothing unusual here.” The Post’s Reis Thebault explains why vote counting in Maricopa County, Ariz., is taking so long and why officials say it’s nothing “out of the ordinary.” (Video: The Washington Post)

Why is it taking so long to count the votes in Maricopa County? Two words: Early. Voting. It has been offered for decades and is popular. In Maricopa County, about 80 percent of voters requested early ballots that can be mailed, placed in secure ballots or delivered at the polling stations on election day. Since this is the nation’s fourth largest county by population, that adds up to a lot of ballots. When the ballots arrive downtown, work begins with a process that involves matching signatures to envelopes with sample signatures on file. The ballots are zipped to bipartisan teams who remove them from the envelopes and then send them to a table. Video cameras broadcast streams that voters can watch online. In recent years, Trump, other Republican candidates and activists have attacked the early voting system and instructed supporters to vote in person or drop off their ballots on Election Day. Arizona Republicans support early voting after warning against it The voters listened. This year, 290,000 people returned their early ballots to polling stations on Election Day instead of returning them earlier, a 70 percent increase from the latest record in 2020. Those ballots had to be transported to downtown Phoenix from across the county, and election officials couldn’t begin processing them until after Election Day. Although the suspension is routine, it has given fodder for right-wingers, including Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who once covered state politics as a local TV anchor, to accuse the county of malfeasance or incompetence. These claims have been supported by a right-wing media ecosystem eager to exploit anything that seems out of the ordinary. “To see the national networks out there and their hosts not being honest about why it’s taking this long, that’s disappointing for these people back here who do an incredible job over Veterans Day weekend. Gates said Friday, gesturing. to the election officials behind him. “We do things the right way. And I appreciate you all being here, but we’re not doing anything wrong. And that someone from here would suggest that we’re doing something wrong, that’s disappointing.”

How many votes are left to be counted in Arizona? Maricopa County residents cast nearly 1.3 million votes in this election, and nearly 88 percent had been counted as of Saturday night, according to county officials. Of the ballots remaining to be counted over the weekend, Gates said most are early ballots that were rejected on Election Day. Election workers put in 14 to 18 hours on federal holidays and the weekend.

When will the count be held in Maricopa County? Officials said they expected 95 percent to 99 percent of the votes to be counted early in the week, perhaps as soon as Tuesday. However, depending on the analysis of the results released before then, the matches could be called earlier.

What is the state of the main games? Senate: Sen. Mark Kelly (D) is expected Friday to win re-election against Republican challenger Blake Masters, a venture capitalist. Kelly led by nearly 6 points with 88 percent of ballots counted late Saturday. Governor of Arizona: This race is still tight. With 88 percent of the vote counted as of Saturday night, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (R) was leading with nearly 51 percent of the vote over Lake, who had 49 percent. Arizona Secretary of State: Democrat Adrian Fontes was expected to win Friday, defeating Republican Mark Finchem, a far-right state lawmaker who sought oversight of Arizona’s elections while pushing unfounded to ratify results from 2020. Tracking the 2020 election naysayers’ progress in the midterms

What other Arizona races were decided after extended vote counts? It usually takes 10 to 12 days to finish counting all the ballots, said Fields Moseley, Maricopa County’s communications director. Here are some recent examples. 2020: 9 days for most outlets to declare Joe Biden the winner. The last presidential election was the highest-stakes race in Arizona history, and the incredibly close margins divided election analysts. Late on Election Day 2020, with about 75 percent of the ballots counted, Fox News called the race for Biden. The Associated Press did the same hours later. However, many other major outlets abstained and the vote count continued for more than a week until multiple analysts confirmed the first calls next Thursday. In Maricopa County, officials did not finish counting all 2.1 million ballots cast in the Nov. 3 election until the afternoon of Nov. 13. 2018: 6 days to announce Kyrsten Sinema the winner. The latest midterm elections cemented Arizona’s new status as a battleground state, and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema was declared the winner on the Monday after Election Day, about six days after many voters cast ballots. By the time the race was called, The Arizona Republic estimated that about 170,000 votes, mostly from Maricopa and Pima counties, were still being counted. The race was one of the most closely watched in the nation, and while outside observers fretted over the length of the count, Republican candidate Martha McSally did not dispute the results and was quick to congratulate Sinema on her victory. As Sinema beat McSally during the ballot count, Trump said the votes “came in from the desert” for the Democrat, a sentiment that resonated among his supporters. 2016: 10 days until Trump is officially declared the winner. The Associated Press predicted the situation for Trump two days after Election Day, but he had already secured the presidency, meaning Arizona’s protracted count was never in the national spotlight. In the end, it took Maricopa County officials 10 days to finish counting the ballots. 2014: More than a month to declare that McSally won a seat in the House. There is a precedent in Arizona for particularly close and controversial races that last for weeks. In 2014, residents of the 2nd District in southeastern Arizona had to wait until December to find out who would represent them in the House. McSally won by 167 votes after a recount and lengthy legal battles.

Did printer problems slow down the count? On Election Day, dozens of polling places across the county printed ballots for voters that could not be immediately processed by vote-counting machines, causing chaos and confusion. Voters were told they could wait for a correction, vote at a different location or put their completed ballot in a secure box to be counted later. About 17,000 ballots were cast that way, higher than usual, though local officials insist…