KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
Matthew Benson of Veridus and former state lawmaker Reginald Bolding joined The Show to talk about the governor’s first veto of the year, a proposal to introduce bounties in Arizona and more.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: So let’s start with something that was not a surprise in any way. The governor had said basically she was going to veto this bill that would have aimed to speed up elections, in large part by cutting off the time by which you can drop off your early ballot at a polling place to the Friday before Election Day.
She had telegraphed she was going to do this. Not much of a surprise, but lawmakers this week also went ahead and approved — at least the House approved — a proposal to basically do the same thing but send it to voters in two years.
REGINALD BOLDING: It’s absolutely commendable that we want to speed up election results. And I think everyone wants to have that instant gratification of who won an election immediately right after. But the question is: Do you want to trade accuracy and safe and secure elections for speed? And I don’t think that’s what voters want.
We’re in this day of instant gratification. If you’re an elected to office, you’re not even serving, you’re not even starting until the first or second week of January. The question is: Can we wait 48 hours, 72 hours to make sure that we have an accurate count of who won an election? And I think we can.
There were several solutions that Gov. Hobbs and legislative Democrats tried to come up with, but Republicans just didn’t want to take those compromises.
BRODIE: Matt, I would assume — and correct me if you think if you think I’m wrong — I would assume that this proposal gets through the Legislature to get on the ballot in 2026. I guess the question is: Do you think, assuming that happens, will voters support this?
MATTHEW BENSON: Well, let me say this. Yes, this measure is going to get to the ballot. So voters will have that choice in 2026. Getting back to something Reggie said, I think it’s a false choice to say we have to choose either accuracy or speed in our elections.
I don’t think voters expect instant gratification when they ask that they know who has won a race within a reasonable period of time following the election, because currently it takes two to three weeks. And that’s a long time.
And that space in time, that’s a vacuum that allows all kinds of doubt and speculation and grifters and other people to crawl into that space and cast doubt on our elections. And that’s a real problem.
BRODIE: How much of this do you think comes down to the fact that in many cases in Arizona, throughout the state, races are closer now than they have been over the last couple decades? This policy has been the law for a very long time now. Twenty years ago, you could still drop your ballot off at a polling place on Election Day, and it would still take a little bit, a while to count. It just didn’t seem to maybe matter as much because the races had basically been decided. The margins weren’t so close.
BENSON: That’s true. California has even slower election counting than we do, but it doesn’t matter there because their races are generally known and the results are called well early. But with Arizona and the fact that we are now a swing state and we have many very close races, it’s just unacceptable that it takes this amount of time to actually get races, to get the vote count completed.
And getting back to what you asked originally: Yes, I do believe voters are going to approve this because they do want to know. They want the vote to be counted and completed in a reasonable time following the election.
BRODIE: Assuming this makes the ballot, do you think it passes?
BOLDING: Maybe. It may pass. You have administrators in place, both Republicans and Democrats throughout the counties. You’ve had Republican secretaries of state and Democratic secretaries of state. If there was an easy fix and an easy solution, it would have been done by now. And in the idea that we’re going to have very close elections and we’re going to have this instant gratification of who won the results immediately after, I think it’s unreasonable.
And we’re also talking about less than 1% of all of the races that are actually happening, those nights. This all really goes back the 2020 Donald Trump election, when he was not selected by Arizona voters. And that seed and that doubt is just continuing.
BENSON: I wish that was the case. But we’ve both been around long enough to know — and mark you as well — this long precedes 2020. I recall it was like 2010 when it was Democrats pounding on drums outside Maricopa County tabulation center, saying count the vote.
And so this is not new. And it’s not a mystery why it’s taking so long to finish the the vote count. It is the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of ballots that people request to vote by mail, that they don’t vote by mail and they drop off on Election Day. That is the issue.
BOLDING: And to that point, that’s a system that Arizona voters want. And it’s incredibly popular, right?It’s a popular system. It provides Arizonans the opportunity to select the candidate of their choosing. And they should have that decision, whether to drop it off at the polls or mail it.
BRODIE: Well, it seems like voters will get a chance to weigh in on whether they want to keep it that way.
So moving from the speed with which ballots are counted to the speed at which some legislators drive — see what I did there? There’s a proposal that gained approval in a House committee this week to ask voters to do away with legislative immunity for traffic tickets, just for traffic tickets.
We saw already this year, two state legislators got out of tickets because they are state legislators. This seems like one, Reginald, that would maybe have a harder time getting out of the Legislature than getting approved by voters.
BOLDING: I don’t think, and I don’t think voters think that there should be two forms of justice, one for lawmakers and then one for everyday citizens. It is commendable that both Republicans and Democrats are saying, “Hey, this legislative immunity statute that’s on the books is outdated. We don’t need it. If you are breaking the law as a lawmaker or as a citizen, you need to be held accountable.” And I think it’s going to pass, and it will be signed into law by the governor.
BRODIE: I’m curious what you make of this. (Former) Gov. Doug Ducey had asked lawmakers several years back to do away with this after a few lawmakers had gotten busted for speeding and not had to pay their tickets. Do you think this is something that legislators will get behind in large numbers?
BENSON: That’s going to be fascinating, isn’t it? I think it’s an open question. If it does get to the ballot, it’s going to break all records for public support. I mean, you’re going to be able to count the no votes on your hand. So, yeah. I think everybody’s going to be watching very closely.
BRODIE: Both of you have spent a lot of time — you were in the Legislature, Reginald. Matt, you spent a lot of time around legislators. What’s the justification for trying to use this when you’re not going to miss a vote?
You can call the Senate president or the House speaker and say, “Hey, I’m running a little late. I need you to kind of hold up for a minute if it’s going to be a close vote.” What’s the justification for using this anymore?
BOLDING: Let’s just call it what it is. It is using privilege and a position in situations when you shouldn’t be using it. At the end of the day they’re not even — my understanding is that these lawmakers weren’t even trying to go make a vote. Some of these things are happening after hours or on weekends. It’s just simply trying to use the privilege of the position, and because of that, I think that should be definitely taken off the books.
BRODIE: Matt, as a kind of inside-baseball question: This proposal was sponsored by Rep. (Quang) Nguyen from Prescott Valley. And the first person this session who used legislative immunity is his seatmate, Mark Finchem. Does this cause inter-legislative district squabbles, do you think?
BENSON: Oh 100%. But I think that friction preceded the bill. There are no coincidences.
BRODIE: All right. So another committee this week that got to work, that hadn’t been at work for quite a while, was the so-called DINO Committee. This is the panel that vets Gov.Hobbs’ nominees to lead agency directors. It hadn’t met for like a year and a half. There was a whole lawsuit. The governor withdrew her nominees and then tried to appoint them basically as assistant executive directors or whatever the name was.
The Legislature sued. The Legislature won. So the governor and this committee are going back at it. Matt, this week Michael Wisehart, the new head of DES, was unanimously confirmed by the DINO committee. But it’s interesting that we are in February now, about a month into session, and this is the only a hearing they’ve had and the only nominee that they’ve heard.
BENSON: Yeah, not exactly moving at the speed of business.
BRODIE: Is this another one of those “there are no coincidences”?
BENSON: No, there are not.
BRODIE: What do you make of this? This is Michael Wisehart, somebody who’s worked at DES for quite a while. Gov. Ducey had tapped him to lead the agency during his administration. Clearly somebody who seems to know what he’s doing there.
BOLDING: Yeah, I think this was a softball for the governor’s administration, and I think this is also a softball for the DINO committee. It gives them the ability to say, “Hey, you’re sending us names, and we’re approving folks,” and it’s the governor’s office saying, “Hey, we’re trying to meet you in the middle. We’re trying to find folks who would be amenable to the committee automatically.”
I don’t think that we’re going to see many more of these confirmations, which is unfortunate. The governor should have the ability to select her directors of choosing to run in her administration. But it was a win for both the administration and the DINO committee.
BRODIE: Reginald, to your point, the Senate GOP had called on the director of the housing department, that nominee, Joan Serviss, to resign over some allegations there. So we’ll see exactly how many nominees this committee actually gets through.
