Pima County still has about 57,000 ballots to process and count, possibly affecting several close races from Tuesday's election, County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez said Wednesday.
Rodriguez revised downward her earlier estimate that there were 40,000 early ballots and 40,000 provisional ballots to be processed.
On Wednesday afternoon, she placed the numbers at 30,941 for early ballots needing to have signatures verified before they are counted on Thursday, and 26,194 provisional ballots needing to be checked.
A provisional ballot is one for which identification of the voter did not match the address on record, or another abnormality such as the person's name not showing up on registration roles.
"Not all those will be counted," Rodriguez said. Nevertheless, she said, all must be checked, and state law gives the county 10 business days to complete it.
"We will have to see if we will need a waiver from the state" of the 10-day rule, Rodriguez said.
The pending ballots could affect the Congressional District 1 race, where the margin was 6,500 votes in favor of Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, and Congressional District 2, where the margin was 1,312 votes in favor of Republican Martha McSally.
Two ballot proposals also hang in the balance, state Proposition 118 on the State Land Trust formula, with a 6,361-vote margin against, and city of Tucson Proposition 409 on street maintenance borrowing, with a 935-vote margin against.
Without any of those pending ballots, turnout in the county was at 60 percent and will go higher.
"This turnout is going to be high," Rodriguez said.
Pima County had 495,647 registered voters for the election, and 297,625 had cast ballots already counted.
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