Final vote tally delayed by surge of people filing to 'cure' ballots in Maricopa County

The final tally of votes in Maricopa County won't come for at least two more days after thousands of people submitted forms to "cure" their ballots − including many who weren't registered to vote.

County elections officials said Friday workers will continue counting through the weekend to verify all votes, and a total could come Sunday night.

Wednesday's deadline for curing ballots − to address missing or unverifiable signatures on mail-in ballots − resulted in thousands of voter submissions to the county's website, county officials said Friday.

"Some of those were unregistered voters," Elections Department spokesperson Megan Gilbertson said, adding that every submission must be verified before it can be cured and counted.

It was unknown Friday if any submissions came from out of state. But officials suspected the link provided to voters who needed to verify was shared, giving access to an undisclosed number of unregistered voters.

As the number of ballots remaining to count has waned, county officials have dropped results in daily batches of 1,000 to 3,000.

Updated results released just before 7 p.m. Friday included an additional 2,421 ballots. Those were a mix of early ballots that have had the envelope signature cured, provisional ballots, and write-in tallies from Election Day ballots, county officials reported.

That brought the total number of ballots counted to 1,559,199, with an estimated 1,900 to 5,750 remaining.

Maricopa County, the state's most populous, accounts for roughly two-thirds of Arizona's electorate. About 99.6% of the ballots have been counted, and most races have been decided. But a couple, most notably the race for state attorney general, are still too close to call.

Democrat Kris Mayes led Republican Abe Hamadeh by 365 votes statewide before Friday's update, when her lead increased to 570. There will be an automatic recount before a winner can be declared.

Robert Anglen is an investigative reporter for The Republic. Reach him at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8694. Follow him on Twitter @robertanglen.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Thousands file to 'cure' ballots in Maricopa County, delaying vote tally