Republican ballot measures would reshape Arizona elections. But the cost could be voter confusion

It's an election year, and lawmakers at the Arizona Capitol are busy working to change the way you vote.

From speeding up election results to getting rid of automatic early voting to requiring ID, the proposals are impactful. And not even all Republicans agree on what should change.

So, here to break it all down for us is our KJZZ Politics Desk: Camryn Sanchez and Wayne Schutsky.

KJZZ

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Thank you both for being here.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you.

GILGER: All right. So there are a few issues at hand here. And one of the major ones, I think, that underlies a lot of this is this idea that elections in Arizona seem to take a long time to tally up results, right?

So Camryn, first, just tell us why this is.

SANCHEZ: There's a couple reasons, but the main one is that we allow people to drop off what are called late earlies. So you can show up basically 11th hour Election Day with your ballot already and just drop it off.

But we have to do a signature verification process on those ballots, and we have to wait to tally them until, you know, the people who showed up on election day in person to vote without mail-in ballots. And so that basically delays our entire process, and it means we'd have to take an extra few days to count everything up.

Plus, our races are narrow. We have, some very purple parts of the state. So some of those races are tight, and it's hard to tell early on.

GILGER: When these races have gotten tighter, right? Like, so this has kind of always been the way we've done things, but it seems like it takes longer now.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, that's right. As Camryn said, you know, it's the tightness of the races which stops news organizations from calling races quickly, which is different than counting ballots. The actual counting has always, in modern memory, taken about a week and a half, two weeks. And Maricopa County puts out these timelines every single time saying, hey, it's taking the same amount of time.

It's just when a race is decided by a few thousand votes, you can't, the media organizations don't feel comfortable calling who they think the winner is going to be until they get further down the line versus when, you know, Doug Ducey was winning a governor's race by, you know, 8%, they could call it fairly early.

GILGER: Yeah, okay, so that's the difference, but lawmakers are really trying to tackle that in various ways this time.

So, Wayne, there are two big resolutions that Republicans in both the House and the Senate have crafted with a whole lot in them, but kind of aimed at getting results faster. What would they do?

SCHUTSKY: Yes, that's what they say, that these are several measures. Some of it would tackle some of those late earlies, like Camryn mentioned, those ballots dropped off on Election Day that are mail-in ballots. It would change how fast they can count those votes. It would change certain voter ID requirements, just a whole array of things really that they think will kind of cut into all these different little delays at county voting level.

GILGER: OK, so one thing, yeah, go ahead.

SANCHEZ: No, I was going to say the question is like whether or not this is actually the biggest issue on voters' minds, you know, because Republicans have made more and more of a stink, if you will, over the last few years about how we are the laughingstock of the country. Nobody trusts our election results because it takes us so long to get them. And that is actually a huge problem that needs to change.

But I don't know if that's the case for all voters, if they're actually that worried about it. And the concern from Democrats is if we change our voting systems to get faster results, you know, we're fixing one problem, but then we're creating another because we're changing voters' ability to vote as they have been.

GILGER: Right. And these are resolutions that would go to the voter. They would bypass Gov. Katie Hobbs, that the voters would have to decide.

Do we have polling on this? What do voters think about how long it takes to count these ballots?

SCHUTSKY: You know, polling, you know, sometimes people, voters in polls say one thing and then they act another way. But we did get some recent polling that did show that speed was a concern for a lot of Arizonans, not just voters, but even those who aren't voting. However, it wasn't the top of the list. Things like accuracy, trustworthiness of election officials, that kind of thing were seen as much higher priority.

So if you're trading off one thing for another, then maybe they'd prefer making sure elections are accurate versus getting it done quickly. But again, a lot of this just comes down to confusion over a place like the AP or Fox News calling an election versus when the ballots are actually counted.

GILGER: Yeah. OK, so let's talk about some of the provisions here that Republicans are looking at. One would basically get rid of those so-called late earlies, Camryn, that you mentioned. How would this work?

SANCHEZ: Basically changing the timeline so you can drop off your ballot, but you have to do it sooner. So that means that we don't have people coming on Election Day and doing it, and that isn't gumming up the works. So ideally, we're getting to those faster, and then we have all of the results coming in faster because we don't have to deal with it at the last minute.

GILGER: But a whole lot of people in Arizona drop off their mail-in ballots on Election Day. People like doing that, right?

SANCHEZ: Yeah, because it's convenient.

GILGER: Yeah.

SCHUTSKY: There's a lot of procrastinators out there. You know, as a political reporter, I like to get mine in early, mostly just so I don't forget. But I know my wife, she has a mail-in ballot. She waits a little bit longer to mail it in. And then there's a lot of people again who are like, oh crap, it's been sitting there. And let's go take and drop it off on Election Day.

GILGER: OK. Another provision that Republicans are looking at here, and they're kind of at odds over, is voter ID, right? Like when voters should have to show ID and it has to do with dropping off those late ballots, right?

SCHUTSKY: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And this is one of those big points of disagreement. The Republican version of this ballot referral, it should go to voters, has a strict voter ID requirement has to be presented at the time of voting or something along those lines, which is really confusing because think about the people who are mailing in their ballots. How do you do that? It doesn't really prescribe how you would do that. So that's a concern.

The Senate bill kind of got rid of that and used a little bit more broad language about providing, you know, proof of citizenship as required by law, which we already are required to do in Arizona when you're registering to vote. So it seems like that one is more reaffirming what's already in state law versus the stricter tenants of the House version that would actually require some form of photo state ID. regardless of how you're voting.

SANCHEZ: And Arizona already has a lot of voter ID laws, some that other states don't have. You have to show ID to register to vote, and you have to show ID if you show up in person to vote on Election Day at a polling place.

So really, it's what Wayne said, which is how are we dealing with this with people who are mailing in their ballots or who are maybe overseas military who are sending their ballots from far away? Or if you're dropping off your late earlies or putting it in a ballot box, who am I showing my ID to? Do I have to have it on me at all times? Like, that is the part of the process that's not clear.

SCHUTSKY: One thing I saw in the last election cycle, 2024. Right now, you can take your late early on Election Day, and if you want to, you can show your ID and have it counted right then instead of going through signature verification. It's not a requirement, it's an option.

But I saw people outside of that 75-foot barrier telling people walking in that they had to wait in the line. And I actually saw a guy walk back to his car with his ballot because he thought he had to wait in line. I chased him down and told him what the law actually was, and he went and dropped it in the drop box.

But it's a real concern that once you start meddling with this issue, I don't know if the people outside that line, the people making that information knew what they were telling us wrong or if they truly just misunderstood how the law had changed. So, you know, when you start meddling with this stuff, it's ... voter confusion is a real concern.

GILGER: Yeah, OK. Another idea here is having to do with early ballots. And there's been a lot of debate about early voting, mail-in voting. I think most Arizonans, 80% of Arizonans vote this way. How would this change how we vote early?

SCHUTSKY: Well, I would say that it doesn't make any specific outside of what we've talked about in terms of when you can drop off those late earlies, but it does have some broad language that allows the Legislature to later implement changes needed to maybe help speed up election results and things like that.

And I know Democrats have had some concerns that means they could in the next legislative session, maybe if they have a Republican governor come back in and try and get rid of mail-in voting altogether, which some folks have, that they want to do.

SANCHEZ: We also had the whole issue of the active early voter list, and Republicans are very mistrustful of that. And basically, they don't want people to be on this list where they're signed up to receive stuff early without having to request it every year. They want you to have to request it every single election cycle. So basically doing away with the permanency of that list.

GILGER: Right. I mean, that would change things a lot, right? 80% of voters getting that ballot every time without having to think about it. If you have to request it, I would imagine many fewer people might do that.

SANCHEZ: Well, it raises the same question of, like, are voters so concerned with these requirements of a stale voting list or voter ID security, that they're going to sacrifice some of the convenience of being able to do stuff without flashing your ID or the convenience of not having to do this request every single year.

Because that's a small thing, but people might forget about it. And people, I'm a lazy creature. What do you do if that is convenient is something that you don't want to really get rid of once you have it?

SCHUTSKY: And especially when it's all based on a lot of conjecture, right? A lot of this goes back to the conspiracy theories around the 2020 election, the 2022 elections. There's not a whole lot of concrete evidence that what they're doing outside of potentially speeding up results, like some of these changes late earliest would likely speed up results.

But in terms of voting security, going to, you know, from requiring people to vote in multiple elections to stay on the list under current law, to requiring them to go every year and re-register for that early voting list, like I'm not entirely sure how that would affect accuracy. Yeah.

GILGER: OK, so let's talk about a separate GOP proposal here that would change where we vote, right? That would get rid of these voting centers that have been a big deal and kind of a big change in Arizona elections of late. What would this look like?

SANCHEZ: Right. So there's the two models. There's the voting center model and then the precinct polling place model. The voting center model means that, you know, I can go anywhere in my region and show up in person and walk in and they will print me a ballot and I can vote there.

But the precinct polling place model, which is what we used to have all over the state before my time, actually, is you can only go to one specific polling location that you've been assigned that's close to your home. And they have a ballot that's ready for you specifically. And so that is the only place that you're allowed to vote. And it's supposed to be like in your neighborhood.

So there's supposed to be a lot of them, which means that if we were to change the law and require every county to go back to that model, we would have to have more of those because there's supposed to be like a certain amount of polling places based on population. So for every, I think 2,500 people or something like that, there would have to be a polling place.

And the counties have warned every time this has come up over the years, hey, that would be really hard for us to implement because we would have to create a lot more and it would take a lot of resources and energy, and also we're concerned that it would confuse voters who, again, have become accustomed to this other system where they don't know that they have to go to a certain place.

And we saw this play out negatively in Texas recently.

GILGER: Right. We just saw this. So last 30 seconds here. Looking at kind of these broad impacts that these big changes could have should voters approve them, how different could Arizona elections look in a year or two?

SCHUTSKY: I mean, if they approve them, then significantly different. You have different deadlines to drop off your ballots. You might have to go to different places to do it. And you might have to have different rules to even make sure you're registered to get that mail-in ballot in the first place, as we mentioned. So yeah, it could have pretty significant changes, I would say.