By Gloria Gomez | Arizona Mirror
Driven by false claims that the 2020 election was plagued by fraud that changed the outcome in statewide races — but not their own victories — Republican legislators on Monday gave initial approval to a host of proposals that critics say will make it harder for Arizonans to vote.
The changes include doing away with early mail-in ballots for virtually every Arizona voter, barring in-person early voting, requiring voters to present identification to drop off early ballots on Election Day and more.
And in pursuit of combating the imagined claims of fraud that fueled the Arizona Senate’s partisan review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County — which that examination couldn’t find conclusive evidence of — the Republicans on the Senate Government Committee embraced changes that will result in fewer Arizonans casting ballots, said Sen. Martin Quezada.
“That’s the theme here,” the Glendale Democrat said. “Each one of these bills is going to end up with less people voting.”
Republicans in Arizona and in state legislatures across the nation are pushing hundreds of measures to add barriers to voting and make it easier for them to overturn results they don’t like, often under the guise of stopping the exceedingly rare election fraud that they falsely claim is the reason why Democrats won close races in 2018 and 2020.
The Republican Party has defended political violence to overturn an election as “legitimate political discourse.”
Eliminating early mail-in voting
The most radical measure the Government Committee approved was Senate Bill 1404, which would end the state’s no-excuse early voting system that was implemented in the 1990s and is regularly used by more than 80% of Arizona voters. The proposal would limit mail-in early voting to only those people who are physically unable to visit the polls, are 65 years old or older, live more than 15 miles away from their polling place, are visually impaired, can’t attend the polls on Election Day for religious reasons or who live overseas.
Early voting is not just popular among voters, but also among legislators. The Arizona Capitol Times reported in 2020 that 72 of the 90 legislators at the time — including nearly four of every five Republicans — were on the Permanent Early Voting List and received mail-in ballots every election. Sen. David Gowan, the Sierra Vista Republican who sponsored SB1404, was one of the few legislators not on the early voting list.
