The case · sourced county figures
Half the budget is staffing. The fastest-growing part of it is procedural.
Everything on this page is a Maricopa County figure with a link to the document it came from. The argument is simple: the county's cost per cycle is rising against flat ballot volume, the growth sits in labour and procedure rather than in ballots, and the procedural obligations driving it are statutory — which means they are the kind of work that can be instrumented rather than staffed.
2024 cycle · the reference budget
$28,996,887 for the July primary and November general
Presented to the Board of Supervisors on January 24, 2024, General Fund funded, and described by the county itself as “less than $12 per Maricopa County voter”. Split: Recorder $12,890,855, Elections Department $16,106,032 2024 Election Plan.
| Category | Amount | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Staffing — permanent and temporary staff, poll workers, central boards, hazard pay, call center, security | $14,531,099 | 50.1% |
| Supplies and services — printing, mailing, postage, advertising, vote-center rentals, telecom, vehicles | $13,265,788 | 45.7% |
| Contingency | $1,200,000 | 4.1% |
| Total | $28,996,887 | 100% |
← scroll table horizontally →
Printing, mailing and postage alone totalled $9,833,160 (derived: $7,544,142 Recorder + $2,289,018 Elections) 2024 Election Plan. Tabulation equipment, IT, cybersecurity and legal are not broken out as categories in the election plan, and no audited actual-versus-plan figure for the 2024 cycle has been released — the FY2025 forecast simply carries cycle spending at the full appropriation FY2026 Budget Book. The March 2024 Presidential Preference Election was separate: $7,824,822 appropriated against a $2,058,761 state reimbursement, roughly $5.77M net county cost FY2025 Budget Book.
2020 → 2024 → 2026
| 2020 | 2024 | 2026 budgeted | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cycle election budget | $21,568,933 | $28,996,887 | $40,122,226 |
| Change vs prior cycle | — | +34.4% | +38.4% |
| Ballots cast, November | 2,089,563 | 2,078,460 | — |
| Cost per November ballot | $5.58 | $13.95 | — |
The 2020 cycle total is derived from the two published election-day plans: $9,909,048 for the August 4 primary Aug 2020 plan and $11,659,885 for the November 3 general Nov 2020 plan. The 2026 figure is derived from the FY2027 adopted budget: $19,771,325 for the Elections Department plus $20,350,901 for the Recorder FY2027 Budget Summary. Ballot counts are from the November 2024 canvass release 2024 canvass.
The sentence that matters
Cost per cycle is up 86% since 2020 while November ballots cast were flat to slightly down. Cost per November ballot cast went from $5.58 to $13.95. Both values are derived from linked county documents, and both survive a hostile reading, because the numerator and denominator are the county's own.
| Department | FY2024 actual | FY2025 adopted | FY2026 adopted | FY2027 adopted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elections (D210) | $23,092,158 | $31,964,834 | $26,462,114 | $36,962,692 |
| Recorder (D360) | $27,856,353 | $38,535,797 | $23,221,256 | $39,563,584 |
FY2024 actual and FY2026 adopted from the FY2026 Budget Book; FY2025 adopted from the FY2025 Budget Book; FY2027 adopted from the FY2027 Budget Summary. The two offices are also in an active authority and budget dispute: the state FY2026 budget gave the Recorder $4.1M while the county's tentative budget cut his budget by about $4.4M with a $5.1M contingency, and county staff estimated $13M–$15M in added costs if the Recorder took over early in-person voting Votebeat, Recorder funding. Any product spanning both offices has two veto points, which is why our first phase is scoped inside the Recorder's lane.
Scale
What a deployment has to absorb
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Active registered voters (July 8, 2025) | 2,660,278 | elections.maricopa.gov |
| Active Early Voting List | 2,036,197 | elections.maricopa.gov |
| Ballots cast, Nov 2024 (80.34% turnout) | 2,078,460 | 2024 canvass |
| Early ballots returned by mail | 973,029 | 2024 canvass |
| Early ballots dropped off | 631,006 | 2024 canvass |
| Envelopes needing signature verification derived | 1,604,035 | 2024 canvass |
| Early-ballot share of all ballots cast | 87.6% | 2024 canvass |
| Signature-verification workstations (45 in 2024, 25 in 2022) | 45 | Votebeat |
| Vote centers / temporary workforce | 246 / ~4,300 | Cronkite News |
| Signature rejection rate, Nov 2024 → Nov 2025 | 0.3% → 0.8% | KJZZ |
The design point. 1.6 million envelopes through a signed append-only event log inside a roughly six-week window, against a hard statutory clock, with a rejection rate that nearly tripled in a single year — 5,903 of 704,548 ballots rejected for signature problems in November 2025 versus 0.3% of more than two million in November 2024 KJZZ.
Where the money that touches this work sits
- $581,332 — FY2025 funding for a Curing Technician and Signature Verification Specialist FY2025 Budget Book
- $550,000 — added February 25, 2026 for expanded bipartisan signature review Maricopa County, Feb 2026
- $4,304,253 — poll workers and central boards, 2024 cycle 2024 Election Plan
- $8,977,421 / $14,220,296 — Services object, FY2024 actuals, Elections / Recorder FY2026 Budget Book
Applying the 2024 rejection rate of 0.3% to 1,604,035 envelopes implies on the order of 5,000 cure cases in a presidential general (derived), on top of missing-signature cases, which run on a separate same-day deadline.
The statutory workflow, A.R.S. §16-550
These are hard requirements, not preferences, and they define the event model any lifecycle and cure tool has to implement A.R.S. §16-550.
| Requirement | Statutory rule |
|---|---|
| Signature comparison | On receipt of the early-ballot envelope and affidavit, the county recorder or officer in charge shall compare the signature on the envelope with the signature on the elector's registration record |
| Mismatched signature | The county shall make reasonable efforts to contact the voter, advise of the inconsistency, and allow correction or county confirmation |
| Cure deadline, federal-office elections | Not later than the fifth business day after the election |
| Cure deadline, all other elections | Not later than the third business day after the election |
| Missing signature | Voter may add the signature not later than 7:00 p.m. on election day |
| Extended office hours | For federal-office elections with outstanding cures, offices open at minimum 8 a.m.–5 p.m. on the Friday and weekend before and the Friday and weekend after the election |
| Rejection | Signatures that cannot be verified under §16-550.01 or cured under this section shall be rejected |
| Daily party reporting | From the first missing or mismatched signature identified after early voting begins through the Monday before the election, the county shall submit daily to each qualified political party an updated list of all voters whose signatures are missing or inconsistent — and again beginning the Wednesday after the election |
| 2026 change | The comparison requirement carves out ballots tabulated under §16-579.02 and, beginning in 2026, early ballots received at a voting location after identification is confirmed under §16-579(A)(4) |
The detailed signature-comparison standard itself sits in A.R.S. §16-550.01 and the 2023 Elections Procedures Manual, neither of which we treat as sourced here. Note also what the certification regime does and does not reach: Arizona requires certification of “all components of a voting system” and HAVA-accredited lab testing for vote-recording or tabulating devices AZ SOS voting equipment A.R.S. §16-442, but neither source defines which components fall inside “voting system”. We treat that as a live legal question in any Maricopa response, not a settled exemption.
Deployment timeline
The path we are proposing, with November 2026 as the target and the later cycles as the scale-up.
- Now – December 2026 · groundworkSOC 2 Type II and penetration testing, an Arizona election-law opinion on certification classification, insurance placement including the $5,000,000 cyber tower the county's existing vendor contract already requires Runbeck contract 220121-IGA, registration as a Periscope Source vendor, and relationships in both the Recorder's and the Elections Department's lanes.
- Q1–Q2 2027 · solicitationRespond to or help shape a solicitation. Two relevant items appeared on the county's Periscope portal in a March 7, 2025 bulletin — 2603-001 Elections Technology Equipment Review and 250086-RFP Elections Comprehensive Review procurement bulletin — behind the Board-funded independent review of physical security, chain of custody and tabulation Maricopa County civic alert.
- November 2027 · pilotOff-cycle jurisdictional elections. November 2025 saw 704,548 ballots in this class KJZZ — large enough to be a real proof, small enough to be approvable, and scoped inside the Recorder's signature-verification and curing lane to avoid the two-office veto problem.
- 2028 primary · scaled deploymentFull intake, validation, cure and auditor-portal load at primary volume, with the event log and anchoring in production.
- November 2028 · full rolloutPresidential general. 1.6 million envelopes, six-week peak, 24/7 surge support through the cure deadline.
Procurement path
Formal solicitation is required above $100,000 and Board of Supervisors approval above $500,000 Procurement FAQ. Requirements may not be artificially divided to duck a threshold, and there is no payment without a written contract Procurement Code. Article 10 cooperative purchasing is a real alternative path: the county's existing Runbeck contract was never competitively bid — it was adopted from Pinal County and then amended Votebeat, printers.
How to read the numbers on this site. Every Maricopa County figure — budgets, ballot volumes, statutory deadlines, vendor unit prices, procurement thresholds — carries an inline link to the primary document it came from and is marked Sourced. Figures describing Operation Encrypt's cost to deliver, pricing, deal sizing and margin are marked Modeled: they are internal planning estimates built on top of sourced compliance, insurance and unit-price anchors, and they are not quotes, offers, or proposals.
Derived values (a sourced numerator divided by a sourced denominator, or two sourced figures summed) are labelled derived and both inputs are linked. Nothing on this site is legal, accounting or procurement advice. The Arizona certification-classification question — whether a given component falls inside the statutory definition of a “voting system” under A.R.S. §16-442 — is unresolved and requires an Arizona election-law opinion before any bid.