Gov. Katie Hobbs on April 9, 2024, at a press briefing reacting to the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling that an 1864 near-total abortion ban is enforceable. Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror
While several GOP proposals that would make sweeping changes to how Arizonans vote moved closer to becoming law on Tuesday, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs accused Republican leaders and lawmakers of attempting to “jam through partisan legislation to benefit them and their candidates.”
Republicans in the Arizona House of Representatives and Senate promised before this year’s legislative session began that they would focus on making changes to the state’s election laws, saying that constituents from both parties demanded it.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Hobbs said that her staff met with Republican legislators and Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Gina Swoboda — who the Senate hired as an election policy advisor — to negotiate bipartisan election reforms, but that the GOP “refused to accept any common sense compromises.”
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Republican lawmakers on Tuesday shot down a Democrat-proposed amendment to the GOP’s House Bill 2703, which aims to make Arizona elections more like Florida’s.
Republicans want Arizona to count votes like Florida. It’s not that simple.
“If they were serious about common sense reforms for the 2026 election, they would come to the table and truly negotiate,” Hobbs spokesman Christian Slater said in a statement. “But policies that make it harder to vote, without counter-balancing reforms to increase voter access, are a poison pill. Without real compromise, the bills will be vetoed.”
Sponsored by Rep. Laurin Hendrix, R-Gilbert, HB2703 would cut off voters’ ability to drop off their mail-in ballots at any polling location in their county at 7 p.m. the Friday before the election, when voters can currently do so through the end of voting on Election Day. It would also require voters on the Active Early Voter List — who receive a ballot in the mail automatically — to confirm their address each election cycle or be booted off the list.
Hendrix’s bill would still allow early ballot drop-offs through 7 p.m. on Election Day, but only at the county recorder’s office, or after voters stand in line at a polling place to show identification and feed their ballot through a tabulator. It would require public school buildings to serve as polling locations if the county requested, and would allow non-emergency in-person early voting, which is currently cut off on Friday, on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday prior to an election.
The proposed Democratic amendment to Hendrix’s bill, by Rep. Brian Garcia of Tempe, would have allowed school districts to deny requests from counties to serve as polling places, and would require — instead of simply allowing — early in-person voting locations to be open until 7 p.m. on the weekend before the election and until 3 p.m. on the Monday before Election Day. It would continue to allow voters to drop off their early ballots at any polling place through the end of voting on Election Day, but would allow bipartisan pairs of workers to transport those ballots to be tabulated throughout Election Day in order to speed up results.
Hendrix and Rep. John Gillette, the Republican chairman of the House Federalism, Military Affairs and Elections Committee, both dismissed Garcia’s amendment, which included several proposals that Democratic Leader Oscar De Los Santos, of Laveen, said would speed up tabulation of results while maintaining voter access.
“It’s abundantly clear these partisan bills are not about speeding up election results, but rather about disenfranchising voters to advantage one political party over the other,” Slater said in the statement.
Hendrix said he didn’t understand the point of Garcia’s amendment, claiming that, in his view, it was no different than a vote against the bill.
Voting center ban, 1,000-person precinct cap
Legislators in the House of Representatives on Tuesday voted 32-26 along party lines to pass House Bill 2017 and its mirror, House Concurrent Resolution 2002, which 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.
House Bill 2017 will almost undoubtedly meet its end with a veto from Hobbs, but if HCR2002 is approved by the Republican-controlled Senate, it will be sent to voters in 2026, bypassing Hobbs.
Both proposals are repeats that their sponsor, Rep. Rachel Keshel, R-Tucson, introduced last year but that failed in the Senate. During a Jan. 22 House Federalism, Military Affairs and Elections Committee meeting, Keshel said that she felt confident they would make it through the other chamber this year since Ken Bennett, the only Republican senator who voted against it last year, was not reelected.
During committee meetings both this year and last year, Jen Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, told Keshel that the 1,000-voter cap on precincts was unworkable for counties, which would be unable to find enough polling places or workers to staff them.
A precinct-based voting model requires each voter to cast a ballot at their designated location, and if they vote at the wrong location, it won’t be counted. In contrast, any registered voter in the county can cast a ballot at any voting center in the county. Most Arizona counties use voting centers or a mix of precincts and voting centers.
In 2016 — the last time Maricopa County used only precinct-based polling places — it operated 671 locations.
If Keshel’s proposals become law, the county would have to open 2,600 voting locations and the state would need 4,400. All of those locations would have to be within precinct boundaries and be ADA-accessible.
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This post was originally authored and published by Caitlin Sievers from AZ Mirror via RSS Feed. Join today to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
