Some Arizonans at risk of being removed from Active Early Voting List starting in January

Some Arizonans will be at risk for being removed from the Active Early Voting List starting in January.

That’s because of a 2021 law signed by then-Gov. Doug Ducey. Under that law, voters who do not cast their mail-in ballot in federal, state or city elections over four years — two election cycles — have to specify that they want to continue to get those ballots.

With The Show now to talk about more about this, including how many voters could potentially be affected, is Sasha Hupka of Votebeat/ Hupka joined The Show to talk about what's happening and how many voters could potentially be affected.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, Sasha.

SASHA HUPKA: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Thank you for being here. So, let’s go back to the origins of this situation, which is this law that basically says if you are on what used to be called the Permanent Early Voting List — it’s now called the Active Early Voting List — and you do not cast a ballot over four years, you may, but are not necessarily, removed from that list. Is that right?

SASHA HUPKA: Yeah. So, we’re looking at a law that was passed in 2021. It was sort of the aftermath of the 2020 election, which obviously there were a ton of conspiracies and misinformation around. At the time, former President Donald Trump was claiming that that election had been stolen from him; that was not the case.

And so, you came into this legislative session with Republicans in the state Legislature who really wanted to do things to change Arizona’s election laws and election policies. And so, this law sort of emerged from that.

The synopsis of it is that if you are on the early voting list — so the list in Arizona that allows you to automatically get a mail ballot — you have to use that mail ballot to vote in at least one election over the course of two election cycles or a four-year period. If you don’t, then you will be mailed a notice by your local election official, and if you don’t respond to it, they will remove you from the list and just assume that you no longer want to receive that mail ballot or that your address is outdated.

MARK BRODIE: And this includes primary — it could be the primary election, it could be a general election, it could be a city, like an off-cycle city election — it could be any election, but as you say, you do have to use that mail-in ballot in at least one election in those two cycles.

SASHA HUPKA: Exactly. And I think it’s worth noting for people that voting in person doesn’t count. So, if for instance in 2023, 2024, 2025, and then again this year, I as a voter am receiving my mail ballot, maybe I’m looking it over before I head out the door to the polls, but I’m voting in person in all of those elections that sort of span that four-year stretch, that doesn’t count.

It’s not about whether you vote; it’s about whether you vote either by mail or by putting your mail ballot in a drop box or dropping it off at the polls on Election Day. That mail ballot itself has to be what you vote at least once in order to avoid potentially being at risk of being removed from the list.

MARK BRODIE: And I think it’s worth noting that being removed from the active early voting list does not mean that you’re removed from the voter rolls. Folks who maybe don’t vote in those over those two election cycles, do not respond to the notice, they can still vote on Election Day or at a voting center. They just will not get an early ballot anymore, yeah?

SASHA HUPKA: That’s exactly right. And so, I think it’s been actually in a way very difficult to explain this law to people because it sort of sounds really scary when you talk about removals, right? These people will still be able to vote.

However, we also have research from other states that have enacted sort of similar laws that does suggest for many voters, this might force a change in their voting habits or sort of lead to them voting less or not voting at all. And so, I think both of these things are true, right? It’s not the same as being taken off the rolls, and also there is some evidence that suggests that this is still something that really discourages people from voting.

MARK BRODIE: And to that point, it was interesting reading through your piece. There’s a particular word that was not used that a lot of times people talk about, election officials purging the voter rolls of people who maybe aren’t living in a particular jurisdiction or have died, things like that. Was that a conscious choice not to use that word in this story?

SASHA HUPKA: That absolutely was. Just to sort of peel back the curtain a little bit and maybe let listeners in on what goes on behind the scenes, every story, those are the types of things I discuss with my editor, and I very vividly remember that my first draft of this story I did use the word "purge."

And I flagged it for my editors because obviously that word is a very inflammatory word, potentially, and so I flagged that for them and we had a discussion. We also talked with some election experts and some local election officials, and ultimately we decided not to call this a purge because we did not want people to think that what we meant by that was that people were definitely going to be removed from the rolls, because that’s not what’s happening here.

At the same time, this is a mass removal from the early voting list, a list that used to be permanent. It was called the Permanent Early Voting List prior to this law passing. And so, this does still stand to have a very big impact in Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: Do we have a sense of how many people might fall into this? Obviously, there’s still another election that people can vote in coming up in November that, even if they haven’t voted in the three previous years, do county election officials or the secretary of state have any idea of how many voters they might be sending notices to?

SASHA HUPKA: Right now, the answer seems to be no. I reached out to the Secretary of State’s Office for this story. I did ask if they could get me that type of number, and they actually informed me that the state’s voter registration system, they were working on coding the capability for them to even figure out that number, so it was not available.

I had reached out to Maricopa and Pima counties as well, actually. They’re on a different system than the state voter registration system, and so I was hoping they might be able to get me numbers, but it just didn’t end up working out for deadline reasons and some other reasons with their systems.

But what we do know is that there’s a group, the Brennan Center, well-known election research organization, they did research on this right after the law passed. And these numbers are not necessarily up to date, but in 2022 what they found was that about 340,000 Arizonans would be at risk under this new law.

Obviously, those numbers may have changed. It’s been some time since then, and we won’t know for sure what the number is until after November, but certainly that suggests a large number of people might be impacted by this.

MARK BRODIE: And it’s a quick turnaround, right, between the November election when county election officials will see who actually did vote, and then they have to send these out shortly after the new year, right?

SASHA HUPKA: That’s correct. And actually, by statute they have to send them out on or by Jan. 15 of odd-numbered years. So, Jan. 15, 2027, is the day that they need to be able to send out these notices. So, I will be obviously doing further reporting on this because I want to know exactly who is impacted.

That Brennan Center study found non-white voters were at much higher risk than white voters were, and so I want to see, is that actually the case? But one of the things I will also be tracking is, what does the process of getting these notices out look like.

MARK BRODIE: Right. Interesting. All right, lots more to come on this. Sasha Hupka of Votebeat, thank you.

SASHA HUPKA: Thank you.