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Arizona Election 2023: Bonds, ballot measures, budgets, voting process, results

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Updated  November 8, 2023 7:31am MST
Election
FOX 10 Phoenix

Election results are posted at 8 p.m. Scroll down this page for links to results in your county of residence.

PHOENIX - Tuesday, Nov. 7 is election day in Arizona. Many cities, including Phoenix, Glendale, El Mirage, and Surprise have bond issues on the ballot, asking voters to approve funding for future projects.

Voting center locations closed at 7 p.m. MST. 

While there isn't a big presidential or senate race on this year's ballot, some people may forget these types of elections, but they're still very important since they include bonds and measures for various counties and cities.

Read More: A look at what was on the ballot

Election 2023: Voters pass all Phoenix bond measures

The city of Phoenix held its first bond election since 2006. It was up to voters to decide whether to allocate $500 million of investments toward new infrastructure. FOX 10's Lindsey Ragas has more.

Jennifer Liewer with the Maricopa County Elections Department says, "Voting is the easiest thing you can do to give back to your community. Today, we have six cities and 23 school districts that have items for consideration for voters. Everybody who's a registered voter in those jurisdictions received their ballot in the mail for this particular election. However, we know that things happen and ballots can have coffee spilled on them, or maybe your 3-year-old got a hold of it. So we have ballot replacement centers. We have 36 of them open throughout the Valley. They'll be open until 7 p.m. tonight. People can stop in, drop off their ballot, receive a replacement ballot… we want to make voting as easy as possible for everybody."

How many people typically get involved in this type of election?

Liewer says Maricopa County will only see about a 25-30% return. They have been able to tabulate about 400,000 ballots and those results will come out this evening. "Of course, anything that was dropped off yesterday (Nov. 6) or today, that will be processed in the coming days."

"It certainly doesn't get the attention that a presidential or gubernatorial election, but there are still people who take the time, who research the issues, and are passionate about these types of elections."

Arizona Election 2023: Mesa results too close to call

The Mesa Public School District is asking for a $500 million bond and a 15% budget continuation override. On the bond "no" votes are leading 50% to 49%. For the override, the "yes" votes pushed ahead just slightly.

Election 2023: West Valley voters approve, reject bonds

Voters in Glendale, Goodyear and Surprise voted in favor of public safety and infrastructure bonds. In El Mirage, a single measure to pay for public safety and other city facilities is failing by a large margin.

What has changed since 2022?

We're also now one calendar year away from the big 2024 election, where we will choose our president, a U.S. senator, and all of our congressional seats.

The man in the middle of it all here in Maricopa County is County Recorder Steven Richer. 

Election Day in Maricopa County

FOX 10's Troy Hayden talks to Maricopa Co. Recorder about the 2023 election.

Since the 2022 Midterm Election, have any of the printer issues been addressed?

"With respect to the November 2022 election, yes, the county did buy all new printers. And the issue there was with the heat sensitivity and whether or not it was laying on the bars thick enough such that it could be read by the tabulators. Of course, all those ballots were then brought back to the central count and were tabulated there. But for this election, we mailed out ballots to every single eligible voter. And so all you had to do was return it by USPS.. or drop it off at one of those voting locations."

Troy Hayden: "I feel that you and all election officials have been put in a position in the last couple of elections to have to reassure the public that voting is fair and accurate. How much of that is that your job right now?

Richer: "Of my goodness. So much. Absolutely. When we try so much to spread the word to try and make people feel confident, the number one thing I recommend is track your ballot. So you can text "Join" to 628683, and you can track your ballot through all stages of the process, or you can go online BeBallotReady.vote. If you want to know more, then come do a tour with us. If you want to be more involved, join us, because we're always looking for Republicans, Democrats, Independents to work this process – and for the 2024 cycle, we'll need about 3,000 temporary workers, and we'd love to have everyone involved."

Watch a live feed of the tabulation process

Troy: "People can actually physically watch you count these ballots, correct?"

Richer: "That's right. You can go to Elections.Maricopa.gov, then go to Info, then Live Video Feeds, and you can watch all our different rooms, so you can watch these processes that are going on."

Troy: "You can watch it as it goes. Obviously, you're not going to be able to see all the votes being tabulated, but you can see people working."

Richer: "When we get more ballots in today, then those bipartisan teams will be sitting across from each other, red lanyard and blue lanyard designating their parties.. they'll be taking those ballots out of the affidavit envelopes."

Troy: "So there will be a Republican and a Democrat sitting at that table, looking at the exact same ballot, and having to agree on what that ballot says."

Richer: "Exactly. And it's emblematic fall parts of this process. They're always bipartisan. They're always on a video feed. They're always able to be observed by political party observers. They're always documented. Those are the types of things we like to share with voters, so hopefully, they have more confidence in this process. Because we do realize over the last few years, there have been some people who have had a lot of questions about this process. Some of them in bad faith, but a lot of them in good faith with people who are just wanting more information."

Lawsuit

Troy: "You are actively in a lawsuit with former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, now a U.S. Senate candidate. Does that put you in an awkward position now, handling a Maricopa County election when you are in a court battle with a candidate?"

Richer: "I filed that earlier this year before she was a U.S. Senate candidate. And some point, it has to stop. That was an intention to put to these defamatory comments regarding stolen election, regarding 300,000 ballots injected into the system, and outlandish claims. They're simply not true, and quite frankly, doing detriment to our voters here in Arizona who want to have confidence in this process, so they can vote on Miss Lake's race and other people's races."

Election results

Apache County

Cochise County

Coconino County

Gila County

La Paz County

Maricopa County

Navajo County

Pima County

Pinal County

Santa Cruz County

Yavapai County

Yuma County