Photo by Jim Small | Arizona Mirror
Republicans in the Arizona Legislature want to “Florida” the state’s election laws, and for the first time in years, the majority of its 15 counties are on board.
The GOP legislators who want to significantly alter voting statutes have been fighting with the counties — who would have to implement those changes — over what is doable and reasonable since 2021.
But the results of the November election seem to have turned the tide. Former GOP Rep. Justin Heap took the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office from Stephen Richer, who angered some of his fellow Republicans by preaching the reliability of the county’s elections.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors also saw significant turnover, with three of the supervisors who defended the county during the Cyber Ninjas “audit” of the 2020 presidential election results either losing their primaries or deciding not to run for reelection.
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On Wednesday, lawmakers in both chambers of the Arizona Legislature worked toward their goal of making the state’s election laws more like Florida’s, which they said will speed up results reporting.
The House of Representatives convened the first of two planned meetings of the Ad Hoc Committee on Election Integrity and Florida-style Voting Systems, with the goal of determining how exactly to change state laws to make them more like Florida’s, which has gotten attention in the past few years for quickly reporting results.
The Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee heard passionate testimony for and against its own Florida-style elections bill, voting 4-3 along party lines to send an amended version of the proposal on to the full Senate.
Senate Bill 1011, sponsored by Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, would get rid of the popular practice for voters of returning their early ballot to a polling place in the last few days before the election or on Election Day.
Petersen’s proposal would speed up results by putting an end to the practice of signature verification for the hundreds of thousands of “late early” ballots dropped off on Election Day and the preceding weekend. Signature verification of those ballots can be time-consuming, and proponents of the proposed changes say voters will have more trust in Arizona’s election results if they are reported more quickly.
Some of those Republicans, like Sen. Mark Finchem of Prescott and Sen. Wendy Rogers of Flagstaff, have spent the past several years sowing doubt in the results of the state’s elections.
“Arizona was the laughingstock of the entire nation for the speed at which we counted ballots,” Finchem said of the 2024 election.
Arizona has always taken up to two weeks after Election Day to finish reporting election results, but no one cared until recently because Republicans easily won most contests up and down the ballot. But that changed when the state became a battleground and races were more difficult to call on election night.
If the Senate proposal becomes law, voters who wish to cast a ballot after 7 p.m. the Friday before an election, through 7 p.m. on Election Day would either have to return their early ballot to their county recorder’s office or vote in person at a polling location after showing identification confirming their identity as a registered voters.
The proposal would also expand in-person early voting, which currently ends the Friday preceding the election, to the Saturday and Monday prior to the election, but an amendment made on Wednesday at the request of the counties removed a requirement for counties to provide early polling locations on those days.
Sen. Lauren Kuby, D-Tempe, said she was concerned that the possibility of some counties providing early voting locations on those days while others might not could run afoul of the 14th Amendment, which requires all voters to be treated equally.
Voting rights advocates and Democrats on the committee railed against the proposal saying that it would lead to disenfranchisement for voters who are not aware of the changes and show up to drop off their early ballot after the new deadline without ID or time to wait in line. Hundreds of thousands of voters drop their early ballots off at polling places every election.
“I think this bill is an absolutely atrocious attempt to make it harder to drop off early ballots,” Sen. Analise Ortiz, D-Phoenix, said before voting against it.
While Republican Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, called the proposed election changes a “minor inconvenience,” Antonio Ramirez, a lobbyist for Rural Arizona Action argued that was not the case for many Native Americans who live on reservations.
Many of them don’t have physical addresses, so they receive their mail at post office boxes, which are often far away from their homes and might only be open a few hours a day, potentially giving them little time to return their ballots even with 27 days of early voting.
He said the proposed changes could lead to long lines on Election Day if those voters don’t mail their early ballots in time.
“For many Native Americans, voting is hard,” Ramirez said. “Please don’t make it harder.”
Jen Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, told the committee that the majority of the counties — but not all of them — were on board with the changes proposed in SB1011, but that the counties needed extra funds to help educate voters about these massive changes ahead of the next election.
On Wednesday evening, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas Galvin issued a statement of support of the bill.
“I’m thankful the Legislature has heard my call and put forth Senate Bill 1011, which will remove administrative burdens on county election workers and make early voting truly early again, all while continuing to give Arizona voters ample time and opportunity to cast their ballots how they choose,” he wrote.
Over in the House, Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, proposed a Florida-style resolution to send to voters in 2026, to bypass a veto from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
His proposal, House Concurrent Resolution 2013, would replace the practice of verifying early voters’ identities through signature verification with a unique identification number for each voter that they would write on their ballot before returning it. It would also require county recorders to verify voter addresses each election cycle before sending them an early ballot, a huge change from the current practice of sending ballots to everyone on the active early voter list.
Marson told the ad hoc committee that this might pose a huge challenge to recorders, and said contacting voters by phone would be extremely difficult because people change their numbers so frequently.
Marson and Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly also pointed out several key differences between Florida and Arizona that could impact the feasibility of modeling changes after that state. Key among them were the population and landmass of the counties. Florida has 67 relatively small counties compared to Arizona’s 15 massive ones. The Florida county with the largest population, Miami-Dade, is about half the size of Maricopa.
Kolodin’s proposal would also end early ballot drop-offs at polling locations other than the county recorder’s offices at 7 p.m. the Friday before the election.
“There is plenty of time, in my opinion, when early voting starts for people to get down there before the Friday before the election,” said Rep. Rachel Keshel, R-Tucson.
Keshel claimed that, when she started voting, “we didn’t have a month of voting.”
“It was Election Day, not election month,” she said.
But according to Keshel’s candidate nomination paperwork for the November election, she’s only been a citizen of Arizona since 2004, more than a decade after the state implemented no-excuse early voting.
And even if Keshel, who was 45 years old when she submitted her nomination paperwork in March 2024, had lived in Arizona when she turned 18, she would have been able to vote early with no excuse. The state implemented no-excuse early voting in 1991.
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