The number of early voting days would be cut and emergency voting locations would be illegal
Photo by Jim Small / Arizona Mirror
By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
Nail-biter elections that last two weeks after the polls close could be a thing of the past under a proposed measure that could be on the November ballot — with the trade-off that Arizonans will have fewer options for casting their votes.
The proposed ballot measure is called the Easier to Vote, Harder to Cheat Act, though the title is a misnomer. Some of its provisions would make it harder to vote, and appear to have little to do with making it harder to cheat.
Republican election attorney Lee Miller, who’s working on the campaign, said the act’s primary purpose is actually to make it easier to count ballots quickly. Arizona’s prolonged ballot-counting process generates distrust and suspicion in voters, Miller said.
“What we’re really trying to do here — and I will acknowledge the initiative doesn’t come right out here and say this — what we’re really trying to do is put the counties in a position where 99% of the votes cast in any particular general election are counted by the time the sun comes up on the Wednesday after the election,” said Miller, who served assistant secretary of state under Republican Secretary of State Michele Reagan from 2015-18.
Those suspicions become magnified when leads change as the counts wear on, Miller said. That has certainly been true in the past two election cycles, at least when the leads change in favor of Democrats. In 2018, Republicans led several big statewide races on election night, only to see Democrats overtake them to win campaigns for U.S. Senate, secretary of state, superintendent of public instruction and Corporation Commission.
The votes counted after Election Day are primarily early ballots that are dropped off at polling places on Election Day instead of being returned in the mail earlier. In both 2018 and 2020, Democratic candidates won more votes among those voters, allowing them to turn narrow deficits into victories.
“Sure, if you’re an election professional, you understand why that happens. But for the vast majority of the population, when they went to bed Tuesday night, they thought Steve Gaynor was going to be the secretary of state or Martha McSally was going to be Arizona’s next senator,” Miller said, referring to two Republicans who lost in 2018. “That causes people to go, what happened?
