“The accuracy is not even a question,” Rep. John Gillette, R-King told the Mirror, when referring to proposals that Republicans say would speed up ballot tabulation. Instead, he said, the No. 1 issue those bills aim to resolve is whether the counting time “sours people on the process.”
Gillette, the chairman of the House Elections Committee, claims that he knows there was fraud in the 2022 election — when Democrats won several top statewide offices — but needs more data to determine whether fraud happened in November. No claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2022 election were ever proven, and all the cases seeking to overturn the results due to allegations of fraud failed in court because there was no evidence.
Gillette said that he believes efforts to clear the voter rolls of improperly registered voters between 2022 and 2024 made an impact and led to GOP victories.
But Sen. Analise Ortiz, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Elections Committee, told the Mirror that the GOP-backed proposals to speed up tabulation would disenfranchise voters. Suppressing voter turnout is the whole point, she said.
The state legislature officially begins its 2025 session on Monday, but dozens of proposed changes to state law have already been filed.
Senate Bill 1011, sponsored by Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, would require voters who return their early ballots to voting locations after 7 p.m. the Friday before the election to present identification to have their vote counted.
This would give voters four fewer days to return their ballot to polling locations without the added step of waiting for ID verification, a change from the existing deadline of 7 p.m. on Election Day to drop off early ballots without an ID.
Voters would still have the option to drop off those ballots up until 7 p.m. on Election Day without presenting ID, but only at their county recorder’s office, a huge change from the hundreds of drop-off locations currently available.
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. It would require early in-person voters to fill out and sign an early voting certificate that reads “I understand that if I commit or attempt to commit fraud in connection with voting, vote a fraudulent ballot or vote more than once in an election, I could be convicted of a felony and fined or imprisoned, or both.”
Following Florida
These proposals are based on early-ballot return rules in Florida, which has a reputation for producing early election-night results. 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 the requirement to possibly wait in line and show ID is worth it in return for speedier election results.
It’s always been this way in Arizona elections, but no one cared until recently because Republicans easily won most contests up and down the ballot. But as the state has become a battleground, it’s become a point of contention, one Republican lawmaker acknowledged.
“Nobody cared if the results were late in the past when everybody already knew that the Republican presidential candidate was going to win,” Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, told the Mirror. “It’s only now that…it could affect the election results that anybody cares.”
Kavanagh, the vice chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee, added that he thinks it’s “embarrassing and obstructive for us to be delaying that information.”
Arizona has been slower than many other states to report complete election results for years but a deluge of complaints about the process only began after the 2020 election, when President-elect Donald Trump falsely claimed that the election was stolen from him.
Over the past several years, Republican candidates and officials made unsubstantiated claims that the longer tabulation time facilitates fraud.
“There would be so much confusion for voters if this is changed,” Ortiz said, adding that she thinks it would definitely have a negative impact on voter turnout. “It’s very frustrating that some of the proposals that we’ve seen seem to be entirely rooted in this kind of excuse that we need to speed up the election results, even if that means putting voter access in jeopardy.”
Kavanagh, a co-sponsor of SB1011, argued that a notice on early ballot envelopes mailed to voters telling them of the cutoff to return their ballot without showing ID would be enough to allay any uncertainty about ballot drop-off rules and timeline changes.
“We’ll just put that on the envelope, and then there will be no confusion,” he said.
A
similar proposal in the House of Representatives, sponsored by Republican Reps. Quang Nguyen and Selina Bliss, would start early voting three days prior to the current start date and allow for voters to bring their filled out early ballot to voting locations to be tabulated after 7 p.m. the Friday before the election. But those voters would also be required to provide identification.
For Ortiz and other Democrats, these proposals are nonstarters because they will stand in the way of some voters.
“That’s a hard line in the sand for me, as the ranking member of the Elections Committee, and I know it’s a hard line for many of my Democratic colleagues as well,” she said.
Kavanagh argued that, if requiring voters who cast their ballots in-person on Election Day to show ID didn’t count as voter suppression, neither would requiring the same of any other voters.
The Republican said that he’s “100% sure” that SB1011 will pass muster in both chambers — but that it will likely be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. Her office said as much in a statement.
“Faster election results should not come at the expense of voters’ rights,” Christian Slater, a spokesman for Hobbs, told the Mirror via email. “As the State’s former chief elections officer, Governor Hobbs is open to proposals to speed up the counting process, but any solution must protect Arizonans’ freedom to make their voices heard at the ballot box.”
1,000-voter precincts
Republican Rep. Rachel Keshel, of Tucson, has again this year
proposed a bill that would dramatically alter the state’s election systems by banning voting centers and capping precincts at 1,000 registered voters apiece. (Keshel was elected in 2022 and 2024 as Rachel Jones, but she changed her name after the 2024 election following her marriage earlier in the year to Seth Keshel, a prominent far-right election conspiracy theorist.)
Several Arizona counties, including Pima and Maricopa, use a vote center model, in which any registered voter in the county can cast their ballot at any polling location in the county. In a precinct model, each voter can only cast a ballot at their designated location, and if they don’t cast their ballot at the correct location, it won’t be counted.
The proposal would drastically increase the number of precinct locations open across the state, with Arizona counties already concerned about finding enough physical locations, as well as enough poll workers, not to mention the increase in ballots cast that inevitably wouldn’t be counted.
There were more than
4.3 million people registered to vote in Arizona as of October, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. That means the GOP proposal would require more than 4,300 polling locations across the state if it became law. And a mandate for at least three workers at every precinct location would require counties to hire a minimum of around 12,900 poll workers.
Gillette said that he backs Keshel’s proposal, claiming that small precincts would ensure more accurate vote counts. (State law already requires all ballots voted at polling sites be entered into electronic ballot tabulators immediately. Those results are then checked and verified by election workers after the polls close.) He added that he thinks that finding poll workers wouldn’t be a problem because the state could hire college students and mandate officers of the courts to oversee them.
Keshel also proposed a resolution to send to voters in 2026 that mirrors her 1,000-voter precinct bill, which would bypass a Hobbs veto if it made its way through both legislative chambers.
Both Gillette and Kavanagh agreed that the proposals would likely be killed long before they make it that far.
“That’s not going to get out of the House, so I wouldn’t worry about it,” Kavanagh said.
When Keshel
sponsored the same bill last year, it was approved along party lines in the House but failed in the Senate when former Secretary of State Ken Bennett, a Republican, voted against it alongside Democrats.
