Pima County elections officials have upped their estimate of how many votes here remain to be counted to more than 47,000 — a 12,000 ballot increase over what they initially projected election night.
That total includes 25,300 early ballots turned in at polling places Tuesday. Those must be verified by the Pima County Recorder, which could take several days, said Elections Director Brad Nelson.
There were 3,200 late-arriving mail ballots that the office received on election day, as well as some 13,000 provisional ballots. Typically, those provisional ballots have a rejection rate of about 25 percent. Provisional ballots are those for which voter registration needs to be verified before the votes can be counted.
There were also about 5,800 ballots that have to be duplicated because the scanning machines had trouble reading them, which happens when people use red ink, for example, when filling out their ballots.
Nelson said he’s expecting a final answer on some of the outstanding races — with Congressional Districts in 7 and 8 too close to call — for several days and possibly into the weekend.
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