Welcome to the first episode of Prickly, a podcast from KJZZ’s Politics Desk. Subscribe here or wherever you get your podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Prickly newsletter.
The county officials who administer Arizona’s elections are warning of dire consequences if legislators don’t tweak the state’s election law to accommodate a slew of recounts — and so far, Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on a way to fix the issue.
- A law passed in 2022 is widely expected to trigger more automatic recounts in the upcoming primary and general elections. County officials warn that the time it takes to conduct those recounts overlaps with the time they need to meet other election administration requirements and deadlines.
- But Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and Republican legislative leaders don’t have an agreement on what to change about Arizona’s elections laws — ideas ranging from changing the timeline for voters to verify their votes were counted to moving up the date of the August primary to July.
- County officials say Feb. 9 is the deadline to make changes to election laws and give election officials enough time to administer those changes for the upcoming primary and general elections. But it’ll take a bipartisan, two-thirds majority vote of the House and Senate to pass those changes with an emergency clause so they’ll take effect immediately.
More Prickly podcast episodes
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A new year means a new legislative session for Arizona lawmakers returning to the Capitol in Phoenix. Political editor Ben Giles catches up with field correspondents Camryn Sanchez and Wayne Schutsky for a debrief on the topics and issues — some prickly — that will likely dominate debate this year.
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Political correspondents Camryn Sanchez and Wayne Schutsky dig into both sides’ perspective on the issue and the politics that could motivate lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session next month.
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The Arizona secretary of state officially certified the results of July's primary elections, meaning Arizonans now know the candidates who will be running in the handful of competitive legislative races that will determine which party controls the Arizona House and Senate next year.
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