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The drop boxes would have to take photos or videos, provide receipts and link ballots to the people who dropped them off
By Gloria Gomez for Arizona Mirror
Early voters in Arizona would be barred from putting their ballots in mailboxes and would instead be required to put them in ballot drop boxes that would take a picture of every voter if under a Republican proposal that won preliminary approval last week.
Under the legislation, drop boxes would be outfitted with 24-hour photo or video cameras that can link any ballots inserted into the box to that person’s image. Each person would be allowed to deposit no more than seven ballots into a drop box, and the boxes would be required to generate a receipt showing how many ballots a person deposited. (It would also have to keep an internal copy of every receipt). And if the camera malfunctions, the box must be designed to prevent ballots from being deposited.
“If we can’t get an outright ban (on drop-boxes) we need to come up with these ‘smart’ drop boxes. In the meantime — while we’re working on those — I would like to see drop-boxes in a secure location,” said Sen. Kelly Townsend, a Republican from Apache Junction and the sponsor of Senate Bill 1571.
Townsend, who also chairs the Senate Government Committee that approved the bill Thursday, said she intended to amend it later to remove the ban on returning early ballots by mail. She said she hoped to push the bill through committee as an alternative in case a bill passed out of the same committee last week prohibiting drop boxes fails in the full Senate.
