Early voting is underway in Arizona's primary election. What to know about a new voter ID option

Early voting has officially begun for this summer’s primary elections slated for July 21. Maricopa County elections officials sent out more than 1 million early ballots, so if you’re on the state’s Active Early Voting list, watch your mailbox.

But this year, early voting is starting amid a slew of proposed voting changes from the federal level, an ongoing dispute over who runs what parts of our elections here in Maricopa County and one actual new voter ID policy in place here for the first time this year.

Wayne Schutsky, from KJZZ’s Politics Desk, joined The Show to break it all down.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Wayne.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so let’s start, Wayne, with this concrete change, one change we know is coming that’s happening this year for the first time. This has to do with a new option to show your ID as you drop off the ballot this year. But this is an option, right?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, that’s right. So typically, you get a mail-in ballot, you can either mail it back in, go drop it at a drop box, or you can actually bring it to a polling place and drop it off there in a box. And then it’ll be tabulated after it goes through that signature verification process.

That’s one of kind of the big culprits of what we these election counting “delays” we see. It takes a little bit longer to process those ballots, especially when they’re dropped off on Election Day. And so this change that was passed a few years ago and goes into effect this year would allow you to have the option of you have your mail-in ballot, you already filled it out, you go to the polling place, but instead you just wait in line with everybody else and then show your ID, and then it immediately is verified via that ID instead of going through that signature verification.

So the idea is that it’s a new option to speed up counting — but again, it’s an option. If you still like just dropping it off in that box, that’s still available.

LAUREN GILGER: Sure, sure. You’ve actually seen kind of the rules around dropping off those late early ballots and sometimes confusion about them play out and and potentially affect real votes, right, Wayne?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, this actually happened during the last election cycle in 2024. And again, it’s not with this rule because this rule is new, but it’s it’s something similar. I was at a polling place in Scottsdale and a late early, as we call them, guy was coming up, really crowded polling place, to just drop off his ballot. Outside of that 75-foot zone where there’s a lot of political folks hanging out, there was a woman who said, “Well, that’s not going to get counted today.” He took it to mean, “My vote’s not going to get counted, so I’m just going to go home.” He turned around and walked back to his car.

LAUREN GILGER: With his ballot.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: With his ballot. And what she actually meant, she wasn’t not technically incorrect. It wasn’t going to get counted today because, as I mentioned, it still had to go through signature verification. So those late earlies typically aren’t counted until the next day or the day after that, which is what causes these delays.

So I actually chased him down and was like, “Hey, no, it’ll still get counted.” She wanted him, this option to verify your early ballot wasn’t available, she wanted him to actually like get it voided and wait in line and vote in person and have it counted immediately because there’s all these disproven ideas that somehow this is connected to fraud and all this, but I won’t get into that.

But again, it just goes to show you that there is confusion about some of these rules with late earlies, and if you have people who don’t maybe understand the rules fully out in front telling people they have to do this, even though it’s an option, I could see that creating some form of confusion.

LAUREN GILGER: I’m sure folks will be watching. All right, let’s move on then, Wayne, to the federal level here. President Trump issued a pretty sweeping executive order earlier in the year attempting to restrict mail-in voting, and that’s being challenged in courts on multiple fronts. But the postmaster general this week made some big headlines testifying to Congress that the Postal Service would not deliver ballots to states that do not turn over to the federal government their voter lists. This was just blocked by a judge in Boston.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, that was just literally within hours was blocked. But yeah, the postmaster — this rule has to do with mail-in voting and the federal government’s attempts to create a nationwide voter database essentially to verify the identity of people. And the president created this executive order directing the United States Postal Service not to deliver ballots in states that don’t hand over that rule, and it’s a big deal here because we’re one of those states.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, most people here vote by mail.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Most, 80-plus percent vote by mail, and we’re also one of the states where our attorney general, our secretary of state have said, “No, we’re not going to give the federal government our voter rolls.” They won a lawsuit that said this violates privacy laws.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, Secretary of State Fontes is not going to do that. OK, what’s next on this front in general, Wayne, when it comes to these executive orders from the president when it comes to voting? I mean, this is a broad attempt to restrict mail-in voting on a lot of fronts.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, so there have been two executive orders, both of which now have been blocked by judges, so for the short term, they are not in effect. However, we expect the administration to appeal. That USPS rule was supposed to go into effect by July, or the final rule was supposed to be published and be in effect for the general election essentially. But now, again, they’re on hold, at least for the states that filed these lawsuits, including Arizona was was signed on. So, yeah, they won’t be in effect for the time being.

LAUREN GILGER: Is there a chilling effect though, Wayne, in terms of just lots of questions now swirling about mail-in voting and distrust in it?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: I think it does create confusion, yeah, because people read the headlines, “Oh, the president is now saying we’re not going to turn in mail-in ballots — the Postal Service isn’t going to turn in my mail-in ballots.”

Now, that’s not the case for the time being, as I said, but again, people read those headlines and now they’re like, “Well, should I change how I vote? Should I go in person?” Yeah, so it definitely could create some sort of voter confusion about the options they have available.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, last couple of minutes here. There’s also this ongoing dispute between the Board of Supervisors here in Maricopa County and the County Recorder Justin Heap, which we’ve talked to you about before on The Show. They’ve been arguing in court for months now, basically about who gets to control what parts of local elections here. Now they’re being ordered into mediation. Is that the case right now?

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, it was kind of an on-again, off-again type of thing, but the current on-again is that the judge has ordered them into mediation. During the latest hearing, attorneys for both sides kind of agreed that, “Yeah, we could do mediation if there’s if there’s an independent person.”

So the judge suggested another Maricopa County judge, Christopher Coury, who could do that. They ordered the mediation, and then the appeals court issued a stay in the case, and that takes it out of the lower court’s jurisdiction. So they kind of just paused that.

But then the Supreme Court weighed in and was like, “The stay can stay, but we’re going to modify it. You guys can still go to mediation. That’s still an option,” and kind of hinted that like, “Yes, please resolve this outside of the courtroom.”

LAUREN GILGER: Right, which, as we heard at the top of The Show, it could be a miracle is what the judge had said. I mean, so a lot of this though is about the fact that early ballots have gone out. Like, we are in the midst of of voting already.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, one of the supervisors — who has his own attorney because he doesn’t agree maybe on everything with the others — actually had requested the judge appoint a mediator about a month ago in filings, and the judge actually denied that request. But now the judge is definitely more on board, and I think a lot of that has to do with, yeah, as you mentioned, early ballots are out. We have an election ongoing, and the principal actors responsible for administering it are still fighting over how to do that.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. All right, lots to watch for. KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky with our Politics Desk. Wayne, thanks as always.

WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yep, no problem.