Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
The Washington Post
If the 2024 presidential election is close in Arizona, a newly enacted state law will mandate a ballot recount that will probably cause the state to miss crucial deadlines for certifying the vote, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and interviews with elections officials.
Arizona was central to attempts by President Donald Trump and his allies to change the outcome of the 2020 election, and many Republican primary voters in the state continue to be fixated on election denialism, a movement stoked by Trump and others who refuse to accept the results. The battleground state is expected to play a pivotal role in the next presidential election and any holdup in counting votes there could cause chaos.
In a Sept. 11 letter to the County Supervisors Association of Arizona and the Arizona Association of Counties, an organization representing election officials from all of the state’s 15 counties wrote that the new law — passed after President Biden’s narrow win in Arizona in 2020 — will “put in jeopardy” immovable deadlines on the election calendar, including those that are part of the electoral college process and those that confirm the winners of August primaries so that general-election ballots can be mailed to military and overseas voters.
Worst-case scenario, more than half a dozen election officials told The Post, Arizona could delay pivotal steps in the process for sitting a president.
The prospect of triggering an electoral crisis has led voting administrators, their lawyers and organizations that represent them to demand immediate solutions from Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) and leaders in the GOP-controlled legislature. One major proposal would move Arizona’s primary election earlier in the summer. Other ideas to buy more time during the general election include speeding up the proofreading of ballots and allowing local officials to more quickly transmit results to the state.
“The entire United States would have to be waiting on us,” said Kent Volkmer, the attorney representing Pinal County, which is southeast of Phoenix and is among the state’s most conservative areas. “The entirety of the American people will be waiting on the state of Arizona.”
