House Republicans want to return Arizona to a “pre-1991” voting system in which the vast majority of voters must cast their ballot in person on Election Day.
Arizona was among a handful of states that largely pioneered voting by mail, and it is incredibly popular: Almost 90% of ballots in 2020 were mail-in ballots, and around 75% of voters were signed up to receive early ballots in 2022.
The move to no-excuses early voting, in which any voter can request an early ballot and then cast it by mail, was ushered into existence in 1991 by Arizona Republicans. The GOP long benefited from early voting here until then-President Donald Trump and his supporters began spreading misinformation about vote-by-mail fraud after he lost the 2020 presidential election.
Since then, Republicans like Rep. Rachel Jones, R-Tucson, who says that her constituents are asking for the system to be scrapped, have tried to eliminate early voting.
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House Bill 2876, sponsored by Buckeye Republican Rep. Michael Carbone, would basically ban the state’s no-excuse early voting system, with exceptions only for the elderly, disabled and for people who must be out of their precinct on Election Day.
While Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin, of Scottsdale, told lawmakers on the House Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee during a Feb. 14 meeting that the proposal still allows a “fairly broad opportunity” for voting by mail, doing so wouldn’t be easy. Those who wanted to vote by mail under the bill’s provisions would have to provide documentation of why, a huge change from current practices that allow anyone in the state to vote early by mail or in person.
The bill, dubbed the “Free, Fair and Transparent Elections Act,” would also ban voting centers, a polling place model that Maricopa and Pima counties both use in which there are fewer voting locations, but anyone within the county can vote at any of them. Yavapai County, one of the most Republican counties in Arizona, was the first to use voting centers.
“I think the system is broken, and voting centers did that,” Carbone said.
The act would force a return to a precinct model in which there are more voting locations, but each voter would only have the opportunity to cast their vote at their designated precinct location. Those who try to vote at an incorrect polling location would not have their ballot counted.
The proposal would also cut down the time for signature curing on early ballots to two days instead of five, and allow 12 days to canvass the votes following the election instead of 20.
Carbone said the bill was intended to make Arizona’s voting system more like Florida’s, in an attempt to restore faith in elections and to ensure more timely results, as well as to cut down on long lines at polling places.
In recent years, Republicans have used delays in election results in Arizona to stoke conspiracy theories about election fraud. In reality, complete election results in the state have never been available on Election Night in any Arizona county, it was just easier in the past to call a race for the winner when the state was solidly red.
But now that Arizona is trending purple, races have been much tighter, making it more difficult to call a presumptive winner before all the results are in. Since the year 2000, it has taken an average of about 12.5 days for Arizona to post final election results after midterm and presidential elections.
“I like to find solutions to problems,” Carbone said. “It’s not a party thing. Florida knows who won by the end of the day (on Election Day.)”
But Florida still allows no-excuse early voting, although its laws also require quick reporting of results.
Carbone claimed that Florida’s use of precincts instead of voting centers and pre-printed ballots instead of on-demand ballot printing, as is done in Maricopa County vote centers, contribute to faster results reporting and more confidence in elections.
Democratic Reps. Laura Terech and Cesar Aguilar both asked Carbone if a better solution to long lines at polling places might be to hire more poll workers instead of completely upending the state’s voting system that has been in place for more than 30 years.
Since Gov. Katie Hobbs has made it clear that she supports a voting center model, Terech asked Carbone why he would propose this legislation that is certainly headed for a veto.
Carbone answered that it’s what the electorate wants.
Jen Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, spoke against the bill, saying that it would be extremely difficult for the counties to find enough polling locations and workers to staff them if the state eliminated voting centers and early voting.
“We think that the electorate is being very clear that they like vote-by-mail,” Marson said.
Kolodin argued that more people are using vote-by-mail after some counties began using the vote center model because now there are fewer in-person polling places.
Marson added that before counties began phasing in the voting center model in 2018, more than 60% of Arizona voters cast their ballot by mail.
Carbone told the lawmakers that he did not know how costly this bill would be for the counties who administer elections, but that he did not think it would be “very expensive.” But Terech countered that Maricopa County would likely need to purchase over 2,500 additional ballot tabulators to return to a precinct voting model, in addition to paying more poll workers.
Aguilar described the changes in the bill as a form of voter suppression, while Kolodin argued that what happened at the polls in Maricopa County in the 2022 general election was voter suppression, describing ballot printing issues that caused tabulator problems.
Although the printing problems caused voter frustration and long lines at some Maricopa County voting locations, no one was turned away from the polls that day and all ballots that were rejected by the tabulators were later counted.
The bill passed out of the committee by a vote of 5-4 along party lines, with Republicans voting in favor. It heads next to the full House of Representatives for consideration.
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