AZ election lawyer here with few points that bear repeating for those watching what’s happening in AZ: 1/

1.Ballots marked with sharpies at polling places have already been counted. The voter feeds it into the precinct tabulator, which counts the ballot right there. The results from the precincts were uploaded right after the polls closed 11/3. 2/

2.If the precinct tabulator can’t read a ballot because of problems with the pen used, it spits the ballot out and the voter is given a chance to correct it. I was observing inside a polling place all day on Tuesday, I never saw that happen. 3/

3.Sharpies can bleed through the ballot, but the ballots are designed so that a mark showing through to the other side of the ballot won’t affect the reading of votes. The tabulators were tested with hundreds (maybe thousands) of ballots to confirm this before the election. 4/

4.If a machine at the central count facility cannot read the ballot, the ballot gets kicked out and a bi-partisan team of election workers determines the voter’s intent and duplicates the ballot exactly as the voter marked it. The duplicate ballot is then machine-counted. 5/

http://5.It  takes “so long” for Arizona to count ballots because (a) ~80% of ballots are early/mail ballots that must be signature verified before being removed from their envelope then stacked and counted in high-capacity tabulators, 6/

(b) Arizona has only 15 counties and 4.2 million registered voters. In contrast, PA has 9 million voters and 67 counties, and (c) Maricopa County has 2.5 million registered voters, it is the second largest voting jurisdiction in the country. 7/

Counting is actually progressing quickly - more quickly than in past elections because the AZ legislature changed the law after 2018 to allow early ballot counting to begin 14 days before election. Ballots being counted now are early ballots received between 11/1 and 11/3. 8/

Arizona counties mostly divide election duties between elected recorders (voter reg. and early voting) and election directors appointed by Bd. of Supervisors (Election Day voting and tabulation). Maricopa County Recorder is a Dem, BoS is 4-1 Rep. 9/