in her mind are here it is the second biggest voting jurisdiction in the country. election officials are defending the pace of their account explaining it as a function of state law and also a record number of people who turned in their mail in ballots on election day. in a news conference they also addressed election workers now being the targets of death threats. the crew here is focus on getting through this count. no one is getting distracted by it. and unfortunately it sort of a way of life for people in elections and elections officials. and arthel, she mentioned these folks are working long hours through the weekend for their work on the holiday on friday the count will continue until the beginning of next week. right now they re working 14 18 hour days. they want to get this done just like everybody else, arthel her. absolutely is a patriotic duty they are, those poll watchers and vote counters doing the job. alicia acuna live in phoenix, thank you.
you also had you have laws on the books that determine, among other things, the order in which the ballots are counted. according to the arizona secretary of state s office, the estimated number of uncounted ballots in arizona is about 619,000. maricopa county, it s more than 400,000. maricopa is the second largest voting jurisdiction in the nation. 80% of voters here were early voters, and under arizona law, folks are also allowed to drop their early ballot off on election day. on tuesday, 290,000 voters did just that. that s a huge jump from 2020 when 170,000 voters walked in with them. once they go through signature verification, once they are deemed good signature, go through an audit cue, they can be sent ahead to the board for tabulation. this number is immense, but it does inhibit us from having a higher percentage of returns
good morning, dana. as the count was updated last night into today we saw the margins increase in favor of democrats. but we still have a long way to go in both sides no that. i will get to that in a second. why is this taking so long? according to the arizona secretary of state s office the estimated number of uncounted ballots in the state is 619,000. maricopa county it is more than 407,000. maricopa is the second largest voting jurisdiction in the nation. 80% of voters here were early voters. under arizona law folks are also allowed to drop their early ballot off on election day. on tuesday 290,000 voters did just that. that s a huge jump from 2020 when 170,000 walked them in. once they go through signature verification and deemed good signature and audit queue they can sent to the board for tabulation. this number is immense.
as the second largest voting jurisdiction in the country, maricopa makes up two thirds of the entire arizona electorate. heading into today, 80% of voters cast their ballots with thousands more expected today. this afternoon maricopa elections said they resolved a technical problem that hit 27% of voting locations earlier today. for a number of hours, this morning affected tabulation machines would not count the ballots at the voting sites; however bret and martha, maricopa county elections officials now assuring folks here every ballot will be counted. back to you. martha: thanks alicia. bret: in new york republican lee zeldin has made the surprisingly strong showing against democratic incumbent governor kathy hochul. alexis mcadams is live at a polling location in new york city. alexis? yeah, bret. all eyes are on this governor s race here in deep blue, new york. as you mentioned pretty surprising how close it is. and shocker according to experts
katie hobbs. right now maricopa county, the second largest voting jurisdiction in the country is trying to get things back up and running after officials say 20% of the tabulation machines are not working. that means they re not counting the ballots on site where folks are voting. here s what kari lake had to say when she was done voting. they got to fix the problem. this is incompetency. i hope it s not malice. we re going to fix it. we re going to win. when we win, there s going to be a come-to-jesus for elections in arizona. officials said that they went into a backup system which allows the ballot to be dropped into a secure box, which will then be transferred to the central office to be counted tonight. before this happened, maricopa county elections predicted 95 to 99% of the results here would be in by friday. i don t anticipate that that timeline should change. we may have fewer ballots that