GOP's anti-election vote scheme would cost Arizona $50M in single year: analysis

A Republican proposal to force voters to cast their ballots at neighborhood voting sites would cost Arizona counties more than $50 million the first year and more than $20 million every election year.

And the plan to limit those voting precincts to just 1,000 voters means counties would have to find nearly 4,000 new voting locations.

Jen Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, has repeatedly told lawmakers that the proposal would put a financial burden on the counties and would be logistically impossible to implement.

Earlier this year, Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a Scottsdale Republican, told the Arizona Mirror that he didn’t necessarily believe it when county representatives told him and other members of the House Elections Committee that some of their election reform plans would be too costly and difficult to carry out.

Kolodin and other supporters of 1,000-voter precincts have claimed that it would cut down on long lines and sidestep printer problems that occurred during the 2022 election in Maricopa County. Kolodin also said that it would make voting more convenient for voters in his Scottsdale-based district, because precincts would be located close to home, within their neighborhoods.

But legislative budget analysts have confirmed the accuracy of the numbers that spurred the Arizona Association of Counties to oppose House Concurrent Resolution 2002.

“I’m not worried when people say that they don’t trust our numbers because I know that they’re right,” Marson told the Arizona Mirror. “I just don’t have time to worry about people who choose not to believe the facts.”

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee wrote in an April 11 fiscal note that information submitted by the Arizona Association of Counties showed that HCR2002 would cost the counties a total of around $53 million in its first election year and more than $21 million each election year after that.

“It’s not a surprise to us at all,” Marson said of the fiscal impact outlined by the JLBC. “We’ve been saying for years that a move in this direction is incredibly costly in terms of manpower and dollars.”

The initial cost would include about $31.5 million for new equipment at each of the 3,957 additional voting locations the counties would be forced to open, an estimate that JLBC said “appeared generally reasonable.” The estimate accounts for around $8,000 to purchase electronic poll books, which cost around $1,400 each, and devices for voters with disabilities to use, which cost about $3,700 apiece.

If the resolution became law, each primary and general election after that would cost the counties around $10.8 million to rent out voting locations and pay seven workers to staff each site. Because there is a primary and general election, that means there would be an additional $21.6 million cost to the counties every election year.

The budget analysts wrote that counties could potentially see some offsetting savings from the legislation’s elimination of early voting locations and emergency voting centers, but those would likely be miniscule in comparison to the increases.

“I think it’s a huge impact cost-wise, regardless of county,” Marson said.

The resolution would ask voters to enact the precinct-only voting scheme in 2026, and is a mirror of House Bill 2017, which would directly make the change in state law. Both were introduced by Rep. Rachel Keshel, a Tucson Republican and member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus.

Both have already been approved along party lines in the House of Representatives and could be brought for a vote in the Senate at any time. But HB2017 would almost certainly meet its end with a veto from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. HCR2002 is a workaround that would bypass Hobbs’ desk to be sent to the ballot.

Both of Keshel’s proposals would ban the use of voting centers and require all in-person voters to cast their ballots at precincts capped at 1,000 registered voters apiece. Most counties use voting centers, which allow any registered voter to show up and cast a ballot at any polling site in the county. Under the precinct model, only voters assigned to a precinct can vote there, and if they vote at the wrong location, their ballot won’t be counted.

If they became law, the proposals would force a significant shift for the counties, since eight of them — including Maricopa and Pima, where 75% of voters live — use only vote centers. Four more use a hybrid system with both vote centers and precincts. Only three counties use precincts exclusively.

Keshel’s proposal would require Maricopa County alone to open more than 2,400 new voting locations and to hire more than 17,000 additional poll workers. In the 2024 general election, Maricopa County operated 246 Election Day vote centers and hired more than 4,000 workers.

In 2016, the last time Maricopa County used only precinct-based polling places, it had 671 polling sites.

“We are confident we would not be able to find enough locations or people,” Marson said. “We struggle to staff 245 vote centers, so a tenfold staffing increase seems undoable.”

Both proposals are repeats that Keshel introduced last year but that failed in the Senate, where former Secretary of State Ken Bennett was the only Republican who voted against it. Keshel said during a Jan. 22 House Federalism, Military Affairs and Elections Committee meeting that she was hopeful her proposals would make it through the chamber this year, since Bennett was not reelected.

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, a Republican and former state representative who supported last year’s version of the 1,000-voter precinct cap, acknowledged during a January committee hearing that it would be a challenge to implement. Heap, who was a former member of the Freedom Caucus, said that a 1,500-voter cap might be more realistic in Maricopa County.

Senate President Warren Petersen did not respond to questions about whether legislators in the chamber were supportive of bringing HCR2002 to the floor for a vote, following the confirmation of the increased cost to the counties from JLBC.

Legislative Republicans and Democrats, along with the governor, are in a political battle over funding for the state’s Division of Developmental Disabilities, which will run out April 30. The DDD needs $122 million in supplemental funding to get it through the end of the fiscal year on June 30, but both parties have been fighting since January about how to accomplish that. Some Republicans have said they are dedicated to cutting programs that parents of children with disabilities say are vital, while the nearly 60,000 people with disabilities and their families who rely on DDD face the potential loss of services in May.

All of the House Republicans who are advocating for cuts to the DDD program that accounted for a large chunk of the funding gap voted in favor of Keshel’s proposal before JLBC published its fiscal note. Neither of Keshel’s proposals include funding for the added costs to the counties.

Keshel didn’t respond to a request for comment on the fiscal note.