Arizona lawmakers want to make sure non-governmental groups aren’t confusing voters with election mail that looks like it’s coming from county recorders and other election officials.
The Arizona House of Representatives passed a bill that would require non-governmental groups to include the words “Not from a government agency” on mailers.
Rep. John Gillette (R-Kingman), the bill’s sponsor, said some outside groups have designed their election-related mail to look like it comes from a county recorder and that confuses voters.
“They are not from a government agency, and they are a lot of times misinformation, disinformation, but they mimic very closely,” Gillette said.
He pointed to mailers sent to Pinal County voters last year.
Jenn Marson, the executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, showed lawmakers examples of those mailers during a committee hearing on the bill in January. The first example was fairly innocuous and dealt with how to register for the active early voting list, Marson said.
“The second one is clearly very partisan — it’s talking about the abortion issue, right? And it makes it look like it came from the Pinal County recorder,” Marson said. “So she got a ton of questions: ‘Why are you using public resources to put this out, etc. etc.?’”
The Arizona House of Representatives passed House Bill 2006 on Feb. 6 with mostly Republican support; four Democrats also voted for the bill.
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a similar bill in 2023 over concerns that rules requiring specific font sizes for the required disclosure were too burdensome.
“While I am generally supportive of disclosure in this context, I believe that the specific requirements around text size within this bill create an unreasonable burden on those who are trying to improve voting access in Arizona,” Hobbs wrote in a veto letter.
Marson said the new bill doesn’t include that text size requirement. She said the bill also doesn’t include any punishment or enforcement mechanism — something the counties originally sought when they first asked lawmakers to consider the proposal five years ago.
“So now we’re just asking you, you know what, if you’re going to impersonate the county, okay, impersonate us,” she said. “But put the disclaimer on it that says ‘we’re not actually a county.’”
Rep. Alexander Kolodin (R-Scottsdale), a frequent Hobbs critic, said he agreed with the governor's veto two years ago, citing concerns it violated First Amendment protections. But he voted in favor of the new bill.
“I like this more mild approach,” he said.
