This week at the Arizona Legislature: Changes to early voting might be headed to the ballot

The Arizona House of Representatives on Monday is scheduled to debate a proposal that would ask voters to change how elections are conducted in the state. Among the changes: early voting would end on the Friday evening before Election Day; voters who want a mail ballot would have to opt in before every election; and future Legislatures would retain the right to do away with early voting down the road.

This comes as a separate effort is getting underway to ask voters to put the right to vote early in the state Constitution.

Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services joined The Show to talk about what to expect this week at the state Capitol.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: So let's start with sort of these dueling initiatives that voters could be looking at in November. The House and Senate have sort of been have these sort of mirror image bills from each other, especially dealing with early voting, but there's some other provisions in there as well.

Is there any chance that the Republican-led Legislature does not send this to the ballot, do you think?

HOWARD FISCHER: Well, I find that hard to believe. I mean, this has been an article of faith for some senators and House members. Their contention is the reason it takes so long to get election results is these quote unquote, late, "early ballots."

And it is true. A lot of Arizonans like to hang on to their early ballots. They mail to them 29 days out. It sits on the kitchen table. Maybe they seal it up and say, oh gee, I guess I got to do something with it. So they take it by a polling place on Election Day.

There were more than 200,000 of those in the last election. And the nature of the law is that first you have to count the ballots that were cast that day. Then you take those early ballot envelopes and you have to compare the signatures to verify that these are valid votes and then you can open them up. That takes a long time.

Question for voters is: do they want the convenience or do they want fast election results? Right. And obviously the Republican plan says we want the fast election results. And the plan being offered in this initiative says, no, we like things the way they are and we'd like to make sure that early voting is preserved, that no future legislature says, no, I'm sorry, you can't vote by mail anymore.

BRODIE: Well, let me ask you briefly, Howie, about that other effort, because that's a citizens initiative not going through the Legislature. That's going to take an awful lot of signatures in not an awful lot of time to get, right.

FISCHER: Oh, they need something like 390,000 signatures by July 2 to get on the ballot. And of course, you know, the error rate on these things tend to be fairly high. So we're really talking close to 500,000 signatures. That's not a lot of time. We have not yet gotten word of who is financing this.

I asked a bunch of questions. I assume there's some Democratic interests in there based on who the consultants are, but we're waiting to find out. My guess is there are some folks who really want love the idea of early voting and would like to have something on the ballot that counters this referendum being pushed by the Republican legislators.

BRODIE: OK, Howie, let me ask you about a bill that a House committee is going to be taking up (Monday) that would set aside $5 million essentially for food stamps and food banks in the event of another government shutdown.

Is this essentially like a contingency plan that would, this money would just kind of be set aside and roll over from year to year waiting for the next government shutdown?

FISCHER: Exactly. I mean, who thought that the government would shut down A and B, that people who were getting SNAP benefits, food stamps, would suddenly wind up with nothing there? It took a federal judge ... in fact, to order the U.S. Department of Agriculture to use their own contingency funds.

But that left a lot of people without a lot of food. It left a lot of food pantries who are the backup source without a lot of food. And so this is a bill by Rep. Alma Hernandez, who's a Democrat, interestingly enough, that they're actually going to hear one of her bills to say, look, we're going to put aside $5 million.

Now, that's probably a half a month perhaps of food benefits in Arizona. It'll also allow it to help out those food pantries if they're running out of food. I think there's a lot of feeling that, do we really want to put through that sort of aggravation again? And for $5 million, which in a $17.8 billion state budget is not a lot of money just to have in the bank.

BRODIE: Right, Howie, also dealing with money, there's a bill that would decide which way businesses round up or down if, in fact, pennies are no longer in circulation.

FISCHER: Oh, this is a wonderful little plan. As we all know, the pennies, they stop producing them. Everybody who has a jar of them in their living rooms or their bedrooms or under the beds, is wondering, why aren't they producing pennies? Well, they cost 3 cents apiece to produce, and everybody is hoarding them. I'm not sure why because they don't even contain much copper anymore.

And so the question becomes, OK, so the bill comes out ,and it's $17.02. You don't have the $0.02 and you're paying in cash. What do you do? Well, this bill says if it's $0.01 or $0.02, you go round down. If it's $0.03 or $0.04, you round up and same thing, you know, six or seven is one way, eight or nine is the other way.

It's called Swedish rounding, and it's been used a lot in Europe lately. The idea is there should be some formula that it shouldn't just simply be, everything gets rounded up to the next nickel or dime.

The interesting thing is it says, now remember, this is only for cash transactions. If you're using a credit card, there's no reason why you can't have a $17 and 2 cent purchase like that.

But I think it finally ends some, some hard and fast rules about what's happening because those pennies are going to disappear really quick.

BRODIE: Interesting. All right, that is Howie Fisher with his two cents. Howie with Capital Media Services, thank you, as always. Appreciate it.

FISCHER: A penny for your thoughts, sir.