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Arizona's Early Voter List Could Be Less Permanent as Proposal Moves Ahead

By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- State lawmakers are one step away from removing the concept of "permanent'' from the state's permanent early voting list.
On a party line vote Wednesday, the House Committee on Government and Elections approved a measure that would require counties to stop sending out an early ballot to anyone who has not used it in either of the last two statewide or federal elections.

Even at that, the proposal by Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, would require county recorders to send a notice to people informing them of the pending removal from the list. Then, if the voter responded, he or she would remain on the list and continue to get ballots in the mail.
Rep. Bret Roberts, R-Maricopa, called SB 1485 a "housekeeping'' measure, saving money by not having early ballots mailed out to those who are not using them.

But Rep. Athena Salman, D-Tempe, said the measure, which already has been approved by the Senate and now awaits a House vote, is just another attempt to make voting more difficult. More to the point, she said the evidence shows that it would more likely affect minorities.

What makes all that important is that Rep. Raquel Teran, D-Phoenix, said data from the 2020 election shows there were about 126,000 people who cast a ballot in that record-breaking year but had not, for whatever reason, used their early ballots in 2016 or 2018. Had this measure been in effect, she said, is none of those people would have gotten early ballots last year.

And Salman said that, given the propensity of minority votes to skew Democrat, eliminating those votes would have allowed Donald Trump to win in Arizona.

She wasn't the only one to link the 2020 victory of Joe Biden to SB 1485. Sandy Bahr, chapter director of the Sierra Club, also suggested a direct link between the measure and the 2020 election.

"Is it because more and more Arizonans are using early ballots to vote?'' she asked of the motives behind the bill. About 80% of Arizonans voted early in November.

"Or is it because the election results were different than certain people would have liked?'' Bahr asked.

Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, rejected the idea of some "grand conspiracy'' to make it harder for minorities to vote.

"This is an administrative cleanup to remove them from the mailing list so that our taxpayers and so that our counties aren't burdened with sending ballots over and over and over and over and over,'' he said.

But backers have another argument.

"This will reduce the opportunity for ballots to be sent out to people who are no longer voting,'' Ugenti-Rita said, ballots that may then be picked up by someone else and voted.
Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said that would be easy to do.

He said the only check now on validity of early ballots is a comparison of signatures on the envelope by county election workers with those on file. But Kavanagh said it would be easy for someone to get another person's signature, perhaps off of publicly filed documents, and simply trace it.

Anyway, he said, it's not like county election workers are trained to be forensic signature experts.
Rep. Athena Salman, D-Tempe, scoffed at the suggestion.

"There has been no credible evidence to prove that that has been the case,'' she said.
But Rep. Kevin Payne, R-Peoria, cited a case in which a Tennessee man said he had moved from Arizona yet an early ballot was mailed to his former home. And it turned out that ballot actually was voted.

Payne said that's one situation that did become public, questioning how much more often that occurs.

"Voter fraud does happen, even if we don't see it,'' Payne said.

While there were specific objections to the bill, some of the opposition appears to be due to the fact that this is one on a series of Republican-sponsored bills this year to erect new restrictions on voting, all in the wake of the presidential election results. In fact, some of these would create additional hurdles in the early voting process, including requiring identification when ballots are mailed and shortening the amount of time people have to consider and return early their early ballots.

Salman said there are good reasons for suspicions of sinister motives by Republicans and why, in her words, SB 1485 should be seen as a "voter suppression bill.''

She pointed to arguments made a week ago at the U.S. Supreme Court by Michael Carvin, an attorney for the Arizona Republican Party. He is defending a 2016 law which makes it a crime for anyone to take someone else's early ballot to the polls in situations where the voter forgets to get it in the mail on time to arrive before 7 p.m. Election Day.

Asked why the GOP is a party in the case, Carvin was clear.
"It puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,'' he said.
"Politics is a zero-sum game,'' Carvin continued. "And every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us. It's the difference between winning an election 50 to 49 and losing an election.''

Ugenti-Rita said foes are making too much of the change.

She said that, in order to be dropped from the mailing, someone would have had to fail to have cast an early ballot in any of four elections in the prior two years, meaning the primary and general elections. Put another way, Ugenti-Rita said, using an early ballot in any one of those four would keep the early ballots coming in the mail.

Anyway, she said, people dropped from the early voting list would not be disenfranchised, as it would not cancel their registration. They could still go to the polls to cast a ballot in person. And Ugenti-Rita said nothing precludes them from signing up again to be placed on the list.
There also were arguments over the cost of the plan.

Bonnie Boice-Wilson of the League of Women Voters, figured that implementing the plan would cost more than $800,000 a year, much of that in mailing the notices to people who did not use their early ballots to ask them if they want to continue to get them by mail.

But Rep. Frank Carroll, R-Sun City West, said that would be offset by what counties save in not sending early ballots to people who don't use them or are no longer there.