How voting methods differ in America’s 5 largest counties

It take awhile to count votes in Maricopa County.

The time to process and verify Election Day drop-off votes is part of the system, but that hasn’t stopped criticism from local and national figures.

Election officials point to the many methods of voting allowed in the county and state and tight high-profile races as a reason that decisions take a long time.

For Maricopa, the nation’s fourthlargest county by population, most voters voted by mail, an option that has been in place for three decades.

Arizona does not require a reason for requesting a mail-in ballot, but voters must request a ballot to be sent one. Mail-in ballots in Arizona must be received by the county’s elections department by Election Day, meaning the ballot must be mailed in advance of Election Day to be counted.

Mailed-in and dropped off early ballots in Maricopa County that arrive before Election Day are counted ahead of the election, so they are among the first results released on after the polls close.

After that, votes cast in person on Election Day are tallied and released, usually late on election night.

Ballots dropped off at voting centers on Election Day go through the same multi-step process of signature verification and counting, which begins the day after the election. Those vote totals are released in batches, and the counting continues for several days, particularly when there are a large number of dropped-off ballots.

Here’s how the process compares with that in America’s other five largest counties by population.

Counties in states where one party dominates high-profile races, like the Democrats in California and Republicans in Texas, also may have ballots counted long after the election, but the outcomes of their big races often are decided earlier than in purple Arizona.

Los Angeles, San Diego counties

In California, all voters receive a mail-in ballot, regardless of whether they request one. The state is home to two of the largest counties in the nation, Los Angeles County and San Diego County, which are first- and fifth-largest, respectively,

In 2020, before vaccines were widely available during the Covid-19 pandemic, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced all California voters would receive a mail-in ballot but could still choose to vote in person, Cynthia Paes, director of the San Diego County Registrar of Voters, said.

Even before the pandemic, California already had a robust mail-in voting program, Paes said.

Unlike Arizona, California allows ballots that are postmarked by Election Day to be counted, which means ballots received after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked on time, are valid and will be counted, Paes said.

California allows counties to begin processing ballots as soon as they are received, Paes said, so most ballots that were received by the Sunday before Election Day were included in the first rounds of results released.

San Diego County and many other counties around California, including Los Angeles County, have also moved to a voting center model, similar to what Maricopa County has implemented.

Voters in those counties who choose to vote in person can go to any voting center in the county, rather than an assigned location based on where they live. The voting centers are open for multiple days ahead of Election Day and can print ballots on-site.

Cook County and Chicago

Cook County in Illinois is home of Chicago and is the second-largest county in the nation by population. However, the city of Chicago has its own elections administration, the Chicago Board of Elections, and the county administers elections for suburban Cook County.

In Illinois, any voter can request a mail-in ballot, but the method is less popular in suburban Cook County than in Maricopa or San Diego counties.

Suburban Cook County, which does not include the city of Chicago in its vote totals, had about 730,000 ballots cast in November 2022, Sally Daly, deputy clerk of communications for the Cook

County Clerk, said in an email. About 122,000 of those cast were mail-in ballots. Like in California, ballots postmarked by Election Day are valid, so that number could increase, Daly said.

Early in-person voting took place from Oct. 24 to Nov. 7 in suburban Cook Count. Early voting in downtown Chicago began Oct. 7 and lasted through Election Day, and early voting throughout the city opened Oct. 24 and lasted to Election Day. Chicago voters could vote at any voting location in the city.

Harris County, Texas

Harris County, Texas, is home to Houston and is the third-largest county in the nation by population.

In Texas mail-in voting is much less common, because voters must qualify for a mail-in ballot. Only voters who are either: 65 years old or older, sick or disabled, out of the county on Election Day and during the early voting period, expected to give birth three weeks before or after the election or confined in jail but otherwise eligible to vote are allowed mail-in ballots.

However, in-person early voting is the most common voting method in the county. Early voting began on October 24 and about 690,000 people voted early in-person, almost double the number of in-person voters on Election Day, according to data from the county.