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Elvia Díaz: Here's how we know Arizona voting will be safe and secure on Election Day

Voters line up at the Tempe History Museum
Scott Bourque/KJZZ
Voters line up at the Tempe History Museum on Nov. 3, 2020.

There’s just one day left until Election Day. And if you’re heading to the polls, Elvia Díaz is here to tell you your vote is safe — and you should be, too.

Why? Because our election officials in Arizona have been planning to keep you and your vote safe for more than a year.

Díaz is the editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic, and she joined The Show to talk more about it.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: You’re talking about safety in this editorial here, kind of voter safety. There are two levels to this, which is interesting. You’re talking about both the security of your vote — which we’ll get to in a moment — but people’s actual physical safety at the polls as well.

And when I was reading this editorial, it struck me how that wouldn’t have even been part of the conversation just a few election cycles ago, and how much our politics have changed.

ELVIA DÍAZ: Two cycles ago — or many cycles ago — the physical safety had been there, has been there as well as the security of the ballot. It’s just the politics and the rhetoric that change in the previous election, and we saw the same thing this year. The safety of the physical ballot is safe.

Now election officials, of course, have learned a lot since 2020, and they have added a lot of layers, I will say several layers to the physical protection of the voters and also to the ballot to ensure everyone for the millionth time that they’re ready in case there are some bad actors. But the ballot itself is safe.

GILGER: Talk about the layers of protection here that you write about in terms of giving physical safety and just sort of peace of mind to voters who will probably be in lines at the polls tomorrow.

DÍAZ: Well officials are not telling us details — as they shouldn’t, right? They’re not divulging what exactly they’re going to be doing: how many people they’re going to have, how many officers they’re going to have and each location and where they are going to be.

But the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, for instance, tells everyone that they will be full staff tomorrow, so that they’re going to be in full force. And the sheriff told us that there's going to be absolutely no room for error there, that they are ready, that they will respond to anything. They don’t want a repeat of 2020. If you recall, armed protesters gathered outside the election headquarters. And so they are ready for that in case that happens again.

And so they’re using the perimeter fencing and barricades. And then if you actually drive around that office, you see that they have added extra physical barriers and security than they had in 2020. So it’s going to be a lot more difficult to get into the building itself.

So you know that there’s going to be protection within the legal limits, right? Because there is a legal limit of 75 feet that people can actually gather. So that’s the county. The secretary of state and state elected officials have also added their own layers of physical protection.

Elvia Díaz
Arizona Republic
Elvia Díaz

GILGER: OK. So that is one layer of this. Let’s talk also about the other big part of this, which has gotten so much attention of late, which is whether or not our votes will be counted fairly, whether or not our elections are secure, whether or not someone can steal them, some bad actor. What protections are in place for that?

DÍAZ: To begin with, an army of people are physically looking at the ballot already. We know that a lot of people have voted early. They have dropped off their ballots to do it in person. And when they do, there are volunteers from both parties looking at it in addition to the workers, the paid workers.

And so the same thing here. There are going to be so many eyes from both parties, from different parties and paid workers, looking at the ballots. So they’re just going to have eyes 24/7 on those ballots. And so that gives me a lot of confidence. So that’s the physical human being looking at it.

But then they also have cameras that are secure. And so those are some of the things that we know for sure. So just to remind voters that they can look at it, it is safe. It is a physical paper that we can see.

GILGER: So there’s a change since the last election as well, in that both parties — Republicans and Democrats — are now expressing confidence in our elections going into it. What’s changed here, especially on the Republican side, which featured many people who have denied the results of the elections of late?

DÍAZ: One thing that has surprised me, it’s the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party. She has been actually great in terms of sending signals and saying it clearly and repeatedly that election workers are just doing their jobs, essentially that they’re not cheating and that they will not. So I think the message has shifted, and it has helped that it is coming from her.

It gives me hope that people are actually listening to her or listening to that. Some of the candidates are the same, and some of the candidates are spewing the same rhetoric as last time — not with the same intensity, but I clearly already hear some candidates saying that they will lose only if the other side cheats. That doesn’t help.

But yes, it’s great that people are listening to that. And also the fact that last time in 2020, if you remember, the Republicans were telling their people, “Do not vote early. Do not trust your vote. Do it in person.”

That is not the case now. It is the opposite. The total opposite. Now they have been telling them, “Vote early, vote early, vote early.” And Republicans apparently have listened to that and did vote early in great numbers.

GILGER: Yeah, which is a big change. So we talked about both parties now sort of saying, “Yes, our elections will be fair. You should vote early.” Is that kind of confidence spreading to voters? Are we seeing that spill over?

DÍAZ: I believe so. I mean, there are people — you see it on social media, and you hear it on some radio stations and also on TV — that are going to continue to spread misinformation and essentially lie about the security of the ballot. But thank goodness that people are beginning to hear that. We will really see on Election Day at night and in the coming days to see if people are going to have trust after the results start coming in.

And the biggest, biggest test, of course, is if your side is losing and you still say, “Fine. We respect the will of the people.” That’s what I’m looking for. And that’s going to be the real test.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

Lauren Gilger, host of KJZZ's The Show, is an award-winning journalist whose work has impacted communities large and small, exposing injustices and giving a voice to the voiceless and marginalized.
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