PHOENIX - Arizonans whose signatures on early ballots have been questioned won't get more time to fix the problem and ensure their votes are counted.

In a brief order late Sunday, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected claims by the American Civil Liberties of Arizona that the deadline - which came at 5 p.m. Sunday - did not provide enough time for voters to be notified of the problem and contact county election officials.

Justice William Montgomery, writing for the court, said Arizona law requires only that counties make "reasonable efforts'' to contact voters whose ballots are being questioned. And he said there was no evidence that counties have not complied.

What that means, Montgomery said, is there was no evidence that voters were prevented from "curing'' their ballots by the Sunday afternoon deadline.

"In short, there is no evidence of disenfranchisement before the court,'' he wrote.

The ruling is a victory for the Arizona Republican Party and the Republican National Committee. David Rothschild, their attorney, had urged the court to reject extending the deadline.

Arizona has allowed anyone to vote by mail since 1991. People voting this way need not present identification, other than when they register.

Instead, ballots are verified by election officials who compare the signatures on the envelope with other samples they already have on file.

If there is a question, an effort is made to contact voters who often can "cure'' the problem with a phone call assuring election officials they are, in fact, the people who sent in the ballot.

Until this election, that cure period was five business days after the election, which would have been Tuesday. But state lawmakers and Gov. Katie Hobbs, facing questions about meeting other deadlines, agreed to shorten that to five calendar days - meaning Sunday.

Jared Keenan, arguing for the ACLU and the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the problem this year was that counties were still processing this past week the more than 3 million ballots cast, both by mail and in person. He told the justices that meant some people would not even be notified that there were problems with their ballot signatures before the new deadline, denying them an opportunity to fix the problem and effectively disenfranchising them.

As of Sunday afternoon, counties reported about 68,000 ballots waiting to be processed. That is part of a larger pool of about 390,000 ballots that have not been tallied.

That number could be significant given how close some of the races are.

The latest figures showed Republican Juan Ciscomani was running about 1,200 votes ahead of Democrat Kirsten Engle in the race for Congress in CD 6.

Several legislative races also are on the bubble, like the Senate contest in LD 7 where Republican Vince Leach leads Democrat John McLean by about 300 votes.

But any uncured ballots are unlikely to make a difference in the race for Senate where Democrat Ruben Gallego on Sunday had opened his lead over Republican Kari Lake by nearly 54,000.

We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.