Tuesday is Election Day. On the ballot are school bond and override elections around the Valley, a recall election in Mesa and the question of a bond for new behavioral health facilities, among other contests. But despite those races, the highest-profile ones are elsewhere around the country.
Today also marks one year out from the 2026 midterms, when control of Congress will be on the ballot, as well as statewide and legislative offices in Arizona — not to mention likely a number of ballot measures.
Jen Fifield covers voting and election news at ProPublica. She joined The Show to take stock of where we are as we head towards mid-term elections.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Jen, what concerns and questions are you hearing from election officials about what they have to do before next year?
JEN FIFIELD: Well, I think there's been so much since the last election that has been in the news about how voting works and how elections work. And that has trickled down to the administrators, the people who actually run the elections at the local level.
You know, obviously there's a lot nationally about voter citizenship, voter eligibility, voting roles, how to manage voter rolls, a lot of challenges federally on those fronts. And then there's a lot of also debate in our state about how elections should be run. And that might play out to a few changes, but not many in 2026.
BRODIE: So let's start with some of the federal questions because those obviously in many cases impact voters here in Arizona.
You've been reporting on a expanded database for checking whether or not voters are actually citizens. Where does that stand right now?
FIFIELD: Yeah, well, this comes from the Trump administration's push to get all voters to prove their citizenship, which as of right now is not happening across the country, even though we have to prove our citizenship here in Arizona.
So this is part of, you know, other states trying to check their voter rolls for non-citizens. They're using this new expanded DHS database. And at ProPublica, we looked into this last month, that database, how the data is being stored, collected, how accurate it is as the states and officials try to use it to determine eligibility, and found a lot of worries and concerns about how the data is being stored, what happens to it.
It turns out it can be used for many different things, like law enforcement, not just voter citizenship on the DHS side. So that's just one area where we're watching. And I think there's concern that, you know, if you are a citizen, you're recently naturalized, you might get caught up in these checks.
MARK BRODIE: Well, the question about the security and what that data will be used for seem to be some of the arguments that Secretary of State Adrian Fontes made to the Trump administration.
When the Justice Department asked for information about the voter rolls, he said no. Does it seem as though that's the end of that story or might there be a lawsuit or some other, some other maybe request from DOJ?
FIFIELD: Yeah, and so that's, that is definitely related to this effort. There's a federal effort to collect voter rolls from all 50 states. And like you said, Arizona has so far said no. But other states that have said no to DOJ have faced, are now facing lawsuits.
I think Fontes' office probably wondering where their lawsuit is at this point. You know, other states, you know, that have resisted as well, have not been sued. It's kind of, it seems like a hand-picked, you know, lawsuits at point. And so it could be that our state is the next.
BRODIE: What is going on with the voters in Arizona who were sort of caught up in that MVD snafu where they had been allowed to vote but hadn't actually provided proof of their citizenship?
Where do we stand a year out from the midterms on that?
FIFIELD: So the AG, Attorney General Kris Mayes, came down recently and said that all of those voters should be able to vote. They didn't, it wasn't their fault that we did not collect their citizenship proof at the time they registered. These are longtime voters who have lived here for decades. And so that should be the case across the state, but that's not what we're seeing so far.
Pinal County is suspending registrations for some of them and Maricopa County has, initially I thought that's how they were going to go as well, but they've reversed course. I think it's just something to watch.
And if you're getting a notice, make sure to provide your citizenship proof no matter what.
BRODIE: Well, is that something that can happen differently in different counties?
FIFIELD: It can. I mean, counties have the right to make their own legal decisions and, you know, then it's up to someone, if they don't like those decisions, to sue.
BRODIE: How common or uncommon is it for there to be this many questions, in some cases legal questions about what to expect a year out from a pretty significant election?
FIFIELD: I would say this is the, you know, this is the biggest year I've seen for that since, you know, 2020 kind of broke open our election system — 2022 was the real of people trying to see where the laws were. And then in '24, Trump won. So there wasn't as much concern from election integrity activists after that.
So I think it's all, everything is up in the air because none of it has really been solved yet.
BRODIE: Well, and there's also the question, I would imagine, of resources, right? Like of finding enough election workers, which has been an issue in the recent past. We know the state's financial situation is not as nice as some people would like it to be.
Are there concerns about how much money and how many resources counties and maybe other election officials will have to do what they need to do?
FIFIELD: I think that Fontes has made it clear, the secretary of state has made it clear that he thinks that there needs to be a lot more federal funding in elections and a lot more state funding in elections, especially because of the turnover you mentioned where these are a lot of new administrators, a lot of people left in all of the conflict that's happened in the last few years in this world. And so we have a lot of new people trying to make due on very little money to run elections.
BRODIE: Is there any reason to think that there will be more state or federal money coming?
FIFIELD: No.
BRODIE: Short answer.
FIFIELD: No reason that I see. Yeah, I haven't heard talks, you know, there was a little bit of talk this summer about providing more election security funding at a state level after there's a breach to the election candidate website here. Those talks fizzled out and I haven't really heard anything else interesting.
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