File photo of Rep. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City /Cronkite News Service Photo by Jessica Boehm
By Mary Jo Pitzl | Arizona Republic
Senate Republicans, who brought the state a highly partisan and widely disputed review of the 2020 election, have united behind an election-focused bill that President Karen Fann describes as common sense reforms that should win unanimous bipartisan approval.
The legislation calls for the state auditor general to conduct audits of how county elections offices do their work, in an attempt to allay voter skepticism about rigged elections.
It also proposes tighter controls around voter registration, new requirements to update the voter registration database and the publication online of ballot images, among other changes.
“We realize this is a very divisive topic right now,” Fann, R-Prescott, said of how elections are run. Senate Bill 1629 is focused on issues, she said, that people can agree on.
Chief among them is establishing a professional audit of the 15 county elections offices, something Fann said the ongoing Senate-sponsored review of the Maricopa County election highlighted.
“Whether people agreed with the audit or not, it showed we could do a better job with our process,” she said.
The bill would task the state Auditor General’s Office with doing performance audits of Maricopa and Pima county elections every two years.
The audits would focus on one of four broad areas each cycle, with the topic chosen randomly each time. The topics are voter registration; how early ballots are processed and signatures verified; ballot tabulation; and how operations flow on Election Day, including the chain of custody for ballots.
In Arizona’s 13 smaller counties, two counties would get randomly chosen every two years and examined on all four topics, according to the bill.
