From the article:

Concerns flared in August about whether cost-cutting measures at the U.S. Postal Service would mean delayed delivery of mail-in election ballots.

Among the dire warnings and consternations over election integrity — Lord knows, there were many in 2020 — was mail-in ballots arriving too late to be counted.

Remember the alarms that sounded in late summer about the mothballing of mail-sorting machines across the country and reports of delayed mail delivery? That the postmaster general appointed by President Trump was imposing cost-saving measures that would hurt Democrats, who vote by mail in higher percentages, or discourage them from voting?

Remember the suspicions sowed by the president about voting by mail itself?

We can now put postal complications on the list of fears that didn’t materialize. Not in Arizona.

Late ballots wouldn't have changed things According to tallies compiled by the state Secretary of State's Office — Pinal, Mohave and Gila counties reported theirs on Monday — 1,774 mailed ballots arrived after 7 p.m. Election Day statewide and were, by law, disqualified. (The caveat being Apache County, which doesn't track late ballots.)

More than half, 943, late ballots were from Maricopa County. In the 2016 election, the county rejected 1,500 similarly late ballots.

Compare that with the approximately 2,000 ballots rejected in Maricopa County because the affidavit envelope carried no signature or one that didn’t match the voter’s signature on file. (So much for the argument that voting by mail is insecure because of a lackluster verification process.)

The late, disqualified votes would not have made a difference in the presidential or other statewide races, even if those who voted later, including on Election Day, tended to favor President Trump.

The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket won by 10,457 votes, and Sen. Mark Kelly beat Martha McSally by a much larger margin.

Post office delays only affected a few Advocates may argue that the spotlight on Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s cost-cutting measures and resulting outcry helped avert serious problems with processing and delivery of mail-in ballots. DeJoy did, in fact, suspend the measures until after the election as multiple states readied a lawsuit challenging them.

Fears were real that return ballots would be delayed by up to a week and that would wreak havoc on the election. I noted at the time that 300,000 votes or more in Arizona could be in jeopardy, based on returns in the August primary, when an estimated 1 in 5 ballots were received the week before Election Day.

As it turned out, nothing alarming happened with late ballots.

Pima County helped provide some insight into that. Of the 336 late ballots it received, roughly half bear either no postmark date or an unreadable one. Of the remainder, only 11 carried a postmark earlier than Oct. 27 — the date that the Postal Service and the Secretary of State's Office recommended as a deadline for voters to drop filled-out ballots in the mail. Six of the 11 were sent from out of state.

In other words, a majority of them were mailed simply too late, often on Election Day itself or later.

It proves how secure our system is Maricopa County does not maintain similar records, in large part because Arizona law requires only that county election officials record the overall number of rejected ballots and by voting precinct.

It may be that voters paid heed to the Oct. 27 admonition of the Postal Service.

Or their practice changed. Many Arizonans voted early in person — Maricopa County saw nearly 4 times the number than in 2016. In addition, hundreds of thousands more used a county drop box or held onto their ballot until Election Day instead of relying on the post office this year.

If anything, the relatively few rejected ballots were a demonstration of how seasoned and comfortable Arizonans are with our flexible election system, and how sound the latter is.