Voters in the 2022 Arizona midterm election approved Proposition 131, which creates a lieutenant governor position in the state. Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy || Arizona Mirror’
By Caitlin Sievers || Arizona Mirror
A group of election reform bills that Republicans say would make elections more secure and speed up results would actually make voting more difficult and time consuming, and are solutions to nonexistent problems, critics said Monday.
One of the bills would be impossible to implement in some Arizona counties, while others seem fated for a veto if they ever reach Gov. Katie Hobbs.
Out of the seven bills that the Senate Elections Committee approved on Monday, six passed 5-3 along party lines, and just one passed with unanimous support.
One of the bills that garnered criticism from both sides of the aisle, Senate Bill 1105, introduced by Sen. Frank Carroll, R-Sun City West, would require early ballots returned to a polling place on Election Day be tabulated on-site at the polling location.
“If you go to the polls on Election Day, then why use an early ballot?” Kavanagh asked. “Do it like everyone else.”
Kavanagh added that he would only continue to support the bill if counties were also provided more funding to open additional polling places to deal with the increased number of voters who would have to stand in line to have their ballots tabulated on Election Day.
Currently, voters who drop off early ballots on Election Day simply put them in a secure box to be tabulated later at the county’s central ballot processing facility.
Jen Marson, a lobbyist for the Arizona Association of Counties, told the committee the bill was “unimplementable” because only about half of the state’s counties even have the capability of tabulating any ballots on-site at polling places on Election Day.
It would also create a need for two separate voting operations — one for early ballot tabulation and one for regular in-person voting — to take place at each polling location. That would necessitate more space and more poll workers, Marson said, both of which can be difficult to come by.
