Associated Press/Report for America

PHOENIX (AP) — Voter rights groups asked the Arizona Supreme Court on Saturday to extend the deadline for voters to fix problems with mail-in ballots, citing delays in counting votes and notifying voters about the problems.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Campaign Center asked the state high court in an emergency petition that the original 5 p.m. Sunday deadline be extended up to four days after a voter receives notice of a problem .

The groups argued in the petition that “tens of thousands of Arizonans will be disenfranchised without any notice, much less an opportunity to take action to ensure their votes are counted.”

“Because these ballots were not even processed, Respondents failed to identify which ballots were defective and failed to notify voters of the need to correct those defects,” the petition states.

Arizona law says people who vote by mail should be notified of problems with their ballots, such as a signature that doesn’t match the one on file, and have a chance to correct it through a process known as the name “healing”.

The groups’ petition noted that as of Friday evening, more than 250,000 mail-in ballots had not yet been signature-verified. Most of them were in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa County.

Just under 200,000 early ballots remained to be processed as of Saturday, according to estimates on the website of the Arizona Secretary of State’s office.

Maricopa election officials did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

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Gabriel Sandoval is a member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national nonprofit program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercover issues.