2026 Midterm Election Day: What AZ voters need to know

It is election day. Polling places across the state are now open. Voters are headed to the polls to make their voices heard. And election workers are bracing for a very busy day as thousands of Arizonans head out to cast their ballots. And Danielle Miller is live at the Maricopa County Election Center with what voters, that's you, need to know this morning. Good morning, Danielle. Good morning and polls have been open now for about two hours and still plenty of time to go for you to go out and cast your ballot. Everything closes at seven o'clock tonight so still many opportunities ahead of you if you are planning to head out today. Adrian here with the Maricopa County Elections Department. Adrian two hours into it things are looking good. Yeah we've had over 17,000 voters go ahead and check in already across the 254 vote sites that we have Open in the county, so it's great turnout. Remember, go to locations.maricopa.vote, find a location near you, and plan to vote today. And we looked on the website, and I think the longest wait time I saw was, I think there was an 8 minutes and a 14 minutes. You can look in real time and see exactly what you can expect if you're heading out. That's right. Those poll workers are trained to go out there, count how many people are in line, average the wait time, report that back up to us so that you, the voter, can go into locations.maricopa.vote and make the best plan to visit the right vote center. They're conveniently located around public transit. These are all data-driven decisions, so where they're at. So make a plan and go vote. Things looking pretty good so far. Voter turnout, let's talk about that. What are you guys expecting for the rest of the day? So we're looking at about approximately 250,000 voters to participate in the vote centers voting in person, somewhere similar in terms of voters that are showing up with those early ballots that they requested, but are dropping off at a vote center or showing up to actually have them tabulated on site, which is a new thing that they can do this year. And here at the Maricopa County Elections Department, we do want to, you know, reiterate, you cannot come here to vote in person. You do have a drop box outside. But what exactly is going to be happening here at the center for the rest of the day? Right. So it's all the staff that's getting ready to start receiving those results that are going to be coming back throughout Election Day. Right. So all those vote centers, they're closing down. They're sending us back those results. All that's going on here in terms of ballots, you can see live stream 24-7, 365. So... People at home can watch us do the process live over our website and essentially yeah they're uploading those results. The first results are going out at 8 p.m. results.maricopa.vote and throughout the night we're going to be tabulating as well. Eight o'clock first drop is going to expected to come out. What happens for the rest of the night? When can we expect some possible final results? Right. So we also got to remember that part of those early drop-offs are going to require some kind of processing. So we're going to continue releasing results throughout the night and into the days to come. And you can check online, I'm sure, as real-time when those results are coming in. Correct. Results.Maricopa.Vote is going to be voters' best way to check to see which way results are going in the county. Remember, if you're looking for statewide or federal races, those are going to be at the Secretary of State's office that's accumulating all those results. Awesome. Adrienne, thank you so much. We appreciate it. And once again, 7 o'clock tonight, you have to be in line by that time to be able to cast your ballot. If you already have that, once again, you can just drop it by any vote center, but you have to do that as well by 7 o'clock tonight. We'll send it back to you guys. All right, some good information there, Danielle. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Danielle. And check the website if you still don't know where your polling place is. I just looked up my address, and it's super easy to find. Danielle, thank you for all the details Details on the races in our state, we have some great interviews, we've had almost, I believe, all the candidates on our streaming platform as well. Everything is posted online, along with ballot propositions. There's eight of those statewide here on the ballot. You can scan the QR code that you see on your screen, head to a special section on our website, fox10phoenix.com slash politics. We have all the information there for you.