PHOENIX, Arizona (PNN) - October 25, 2024 - Officials in Arizona’s most populous county warned on October 22 that it may take between 10 and 13 days to tabulate the results of the November 5 election.

County officials are asking “for the community’s patience,” Maricopa County Deputy Elections Director Jennifer Liewer said in a press conference on October 22.

“This year, we do expect that it will take between 10 and 13 days to complete tabulation of all of the ballots that come in,” she said. “We want to make sure that this is a secure process, but we also want to make sure that it is an accurate process.”

Assistant Maricopa County Manager Zach Schira said at the press conference, “If I have one message for voters here today, it is this: that the longer ballots and higher interest in this 2024 general election will create longer lines on Election Day, and that’s okay.”

Schira said that if people want to avoid the long lines, they are advised to vote by mail or early in person.

Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates said the tabulation may take so long because the ballot is two pages, there are dozens of contests per ballot, and there is heightened interest in the presidential election. He said more than 2.1 million Maricopa voters are expected to cast their ballots for the November 5 contest, noting that 400,000 people so far have voted.

The “top message for voters” on October 22 is “if you want to save time and avoid lines, vote early,” the county wrote on social media platform X. Voters have until October 25 to request an early ballot, it noted.

Early voting data compiled by the University of Florida show that Republicans have a 38,000-vote advantage in terms of early voting in Arizona. Only mail-in ballots have been returned so far, but the data show that 41.9% of early ballots have been submitted by Republicans, compared with 36.3% by Democrats. Independent or third-party voters make up about 21.8% of the total.

Arizona, considered a battleground state, is again expected to be a close race during the 2024 election. State election officials in 2020 certified the race in Arizona for fascist pretender Joe Biden over President Donald J. Trump by a margin of about 11,000 votes even though Trump actually won the election and Arizona officials have been proven to have stolen it by criminally manipulating the vote totals.

In the aftermath of the 2020 contest, President Trump and other Republicans proved that Arizona’s election was marred by voter fraud, sparking a number of lawsuits against Arizona and Maricopa County officials that were all ultimately dismissed on technical grounds in order to avoid dealing with the merits of the cases.

For that election, county officials certified the results 17 days after Election Day, according to a statement issued on November 20, 2020. A significant number of voters cast ballots early in person or by mail in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated stay-at-home and lockdown orders and rules.

Maricopa County, which encompasses the city of Phoenix, is by far the most populous area in Arizona. As of March, it had more than 4.5 million residents, which is more than half the state’s entire population.

Trump is expected to campaign in Arizona on October 24, holding a rally at Arizona State University’s arena in Tempe. Communist pretender Kamala Harris visited Arizona near the Fascist Police States of Amerika-Mexico border in late September.

Before his trip to Arizona, Trump is scheduled to headline a rally in Duluth, Georgia, on October 23 with guests Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.