Díaz and Roberts: Should we change Arizona election law to make ballot counting faster?

Election Day was nearly a week ago, and we still don't know for sure the winners in several Arizona races, including Ruben Gallego's race against Kari Lake for an all important U.S. Senate seat.

And while Maricopa County election officials warned us this would happen and that in fact, this is usually how long it takes to count votes in Arizona, our next guest says it is a problem that is fixable.

Laurie Roberts is a columnist for the Arizona Republic, and she joins editorial page editor Elvia Díaz on The Show to talk more about it.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: So Laurie, there is a real and specific reason, right, that it takes so long to count votes here in Arizona. Tell us what it is.

LAURE ROBERTS: Well, the problem is, is that we love our early ballot program. It's wildly popular. We've had it for decades. And in recent years, probably the last 10 or so, more and more people are dropping off their early ballots at the polling place on Election Day rather than mailing it in, which would allow for those votes to be processed and tabulated ahead of time, they're dropping it off on election day.

State law says you can't touch those ballots until the next day. You can't begin to process them. And so when you have 225,000 people drop off early ballots on Election Day ballots that you can't touch, you're gonna notice that it's gonna take time. It's always taken time to count these ballots, an average of 13 days actually over the last 20 years. But we, we didn't used to have these close races. So no one really noticed within a day or so, most of the races were called.

But in the last oh, four years, we've had very, very close races and so people are watching and watching and watching and yet it takes days and days and days to process that many ballots if you're going to do it correctly. So, so that's the problem, right.

GILGER: Right. So that's the problem. Then they can open those ballots. They have to check the signatures. There's a verification process, all of that takes time as well. You say Laurie in, in your latest column about this, that “it is embarrassing, frustrating and ridiculous.” Tell us why. 

ROBERTS: Did you see over the weekend, there was a map of all of the United States, and every single state was red or blue, and there we were this sort of beige color because we're the one state that stands out as not being able to tell people who won our elections.

Can you imagine if this presidential election had been close and the election was hanging on the state of Arizona? As of this weekend, we still would not have known who was president. It's, it's not really acceptable and we look ridiculous to the rest of the world and beyond that, it opens the door for people to be distrustful of, why is it taking you so long? And what are you doing? And are you rigging the election?

You're going to start hearing that already. As we get final results in the next day or so, and we can fix that. We don't have to be that state.

GILGER: OK, so tell us what the fix would look like. And then I want to hear what Elvia thinks about this.

ROBERTS: OK. The fix is really simple. You simply say we're going to put the early back in early ballots. You can drop off your early ballot until 5 p.m. on the Friday before the election. If you want to vote after that, you can either go on Saturday, Sunday or Monday to an early voting place and vote in person or you can come to the polling place on Tuesday, Election Day. And instead of dropping off an early ballot, get in line and vote the old fashioned way that would solve the problem.

It would give, it may not mean that we'd have every ballot counted by Election Day, but it would give election officials a chance not to just be inundated in this paper on election night and have, have us be in a position six days later where we still don't know who on the Senate race, though I think we're kind of, do know there.

GILGER: So Elvia, do you agree that this is an embarrassment for our state? There are other races in other states that have yet to be called as well because they do something similar or have a process that also takes some time.

ELVIA DÍAZ: When I hear stuff like that, especially from the conservatives who could have passed the law that Laurie was talking about, then no, absolutely not. They're just following the law. And so as Laurie was saying, if you want to fix it, then change the law.

There is another one that wasn't mentioned here and that's the, the fact that, you know, Arizona doesn't require counties to check the ID of those dropping off their early ballot. So they, they, they can change that as well. But tell me why haven't they changed it in, in the first place?

And also keep in mind that, you know, workers, election workers, have been counting ballots for what, 12, 14 hours a day and they come into this election being dehumanized and being attacked like who, who wants to do that job, right? You know, thank goodness it appears that they had enough workers and just a little detail about following the law.

So it also tells me that people just don't pay attention. I mean, we have been talking about this for, you know, since Donald Trump started saying the elections were rigged, and they just don't care to spend a few minutes to understand how the system works and you know, and to actually call their representatives and say change it if you don't like it.

Now you hear a lot about, what about Florida? They do it better. Well, Florida has different laws, period. As simple as that.

GILGER: Yeah. So as Laurie mentioned, right, like dropping off at the polls, those early ballots, they call them early lates, right, in political land. It's an incredibly popular way to vote. It's getting more popular. It also tends to trend Democratic and younger those ballots as we've seen in the last couple of days as ballots continue to get counted. Do you think, Laurie, that there will be a good amount of pushback on a proposal like this from someone like Warren Petersen who you talked to?

ROBERTS: Oh, there's going to definitely be push back. I think it was in 2019, former Sren. Michelle Ugenti-Rita reminded me that she actually had a bill to do just what I've been describing, thoughI don't know if it included the open balloting over the weekends. And it died. And she also reminded me that I opposed it at the time and I, and I look back at it and indeed I did because Democrats were concerned at the time that this would lead to voter suppression. We weren't having this kind of sixth day issue then.

And so I think in 2020 is when I sort of began changing my mind on this issue, and specifically 2022 when we saw a record number of early ballots dropped off at the polls, more even than this year. I think it was 229,000 that year.

So that led Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer in 2023 to actually propose this idea. And again, it just didn't get anywhere. I think Democrats were resoundingly against it and enough Republicans just weren't interested in the idea that it didn't go anywhere. But Sen. Petersen has said he's going to bring the issue back this year and he feels like there's going to be more interest in it given what has happened this year. So I guess we'll see.

GILGER: Yeah, I guess we'll see. Elvia, what do you make of that? Like do you think some will see this as disenfranchising?

DÍAZ: Well, yes, of course. And that has been the narrative for a long time, you know, 75% of voters do so early. And there is another new law that we didn't mention, and it is the fact that if you drop off your, your early ballot, the election workers have to count that ballot physically by hand and scan the signature before they do anything. So that's another layer that we have to deal with. So there's that as well.

I don't think anything is going to go anywhere if, in fact, you know, Gov. [Katie] Hobbs vetoes it. I mean, they, they may have enough Republicans to pass a bill. But, you know, as long as you have these other issues about voter ID and specific areas, you know, like in, in the tribal lands and Navajo Nation, and then where ID and so many other of the laws that we're talking about will in fact keep people from voting.

GILGER: Yeah. And we have heard that many expect the governor to veto a bill like this, should it make it to her desk.