ARIZONA: What happens when you mail in your early ballot?

After all those steps are completed, the ballots — still in their affidavit envelopes — are taken out of the secure vault at the Runbeck facility to make their way to be tabulated. The ballots are then removed from the envelopes to be inspected and confirmed to be from this election before being tabulated.

Bipartisan teams of two ensure that every ballot and affidavit envelope are separated to ensure that the integrity of a voter’s secret ballot remains intact. If the ballot cannot be read or has an overvote — when a ballot has more votes for a race than is allowed — it is sent to adjudication.

If that happens, a bipartisan team evaluates the ballot to determine what the voter’s intent was, and both members of the team have to agree on the decision.

Finally, those tabulated results are then stored on computer servers that are air-gapped, meaning they have no way to connect to the internet. Those computers are inaccessible except to the highest ranked non-elected election officials until Election Day. These early ballots will be the first set of results released on election night.

Except, it seems, in Maricopa County.