More than 75% of AZ voters use early ballots — and every House Republican just voted to take that away

House Republicans have approved a bill that would upend the way that Arizonans vote, ending no-excuse early voting by mail, by far the most popular way to cast a ballot in the state.

On a party-line vote of 31-28, the Arizona House of Representatives on Thursday backed a proposal that would force a return to precinct-based voting instead of voting centers and would force most voters to head to the polls on Election Day instead of dropping off or mailing an early ballot.

House Bill 2876 next moves to the Senate for consideration, but if it makes it past that chamber, it’s all but certain that Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will veto it.

The bill, like many others proposed by Republicans in the state legislature this year, is aimed at addressing conspiracy theories that the 2020 Arizona election was somehow stolen from then-President Donald Trump and that victories in the 2022 election were similarly swiped from several Republicans running for statewide offices.

Its sponsor, Republican Rep. Michael Carbone, of Buckeye, dubbed it the “Free, Fair and Transparent Elections Act,” and said the bill would make Arizona’s system of voting more like those in Florida and Illinois. He claimed that his bill would mean quicker release of results following elections, a point of contention for some who believe that a slower release of results means that fraud must have occurred.

During a debate of the bill on Feb. 28, Democratic Rep. Oscar De Los Santos, of Laveen, called the legislation “deeply misguided,” saying that Arizona already has free and fair elections thanks in part to the work of Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.

Some Republicans in recent years have used delays in Arizona’s election results — largely due to processing and counting early ballots that were delivered on Election Day — to stoke conspiracy theories about election fraud. In reality, complete election results in the state have never been available on Election Night in any Arizona county, it was just easier in the past to call a race for the winner when the state was solidly red and Republicans won by large margins.

But now that Arizona is trending purple, races have been much tighter, making it more difficult to call a presumptive winner before all the results are in.

In 1991, Republicans ushered no-excuses early voting, in which any voter can request an early ballot and then cast it by mail, into existence in Arizona. The GOP long benefited from early voting here until then-President Donald Trump and his supporters began spreading misinformation about vote-by-mail fraud after he lost the 2020 presidential election.

Voting by mail remains incredibly popular in Arizona, with almost 90% of ballots in 2020 cast by mail and around 75% of voters signed up to receive early ballots in 2022.

Democratic Rep. Laura Terech warned Carbone that banning voting centers and forcing a return to precinct-based voting would cause a huge increase in provisional ballots, ultimately meaning that a larger percentage of ballots cast on Election Day will never be counted.

Carbone told Terech that he “disagreed” with that, but the numbers say that he is categorically wrong.

Several counties in Arizona, including Maricopa, Pima and Yavapai, used a vote center model, wherein any registered voter in the county can cast their ballot at any polling location in the county. In a precinct model, there are more voting locations, but each voter can only cast a ballot at their designated location.

Voters who cast their ballot at the wrong location would not have their votes counted.

In 2014, when Maricopa County voters were still casting their ballots at designated precincts, 19% of Election Day voters cast provisional ballots. That’s compared to only 3% in 2022 after the county began using only voting centers.

Before voting in favor of the bill on Feb. 29, Republican Rep. Neal Carter of San Tan Valley used Pinal County as an example of the success of precinct-based voting, saying that the county has had “no problems with elections.”

But that ignores what happened in 2022.

In July, Pinal County’s elections department sent to voters more than 60,000 ballots that didn’t include their town elections. And just a month later in the August primary, some Pinal County voters stood in line for hours after precinct locations ran out of ballots because the elections director didn’t order enough of them.

Carter didn’t mention those issues, saying instead that he was appalled at the lines he’s seen at vote centers in Maricopa County, as compared to the short lines that he has personally experienced at his precinct in Pinal County, where he said there were “never more than 3-4 people in line.”

Maricopa County has a mostly urban population of almost 4.5 million while Pinal’s is mostly rural with around 450,000 residents.

“I think that the precinct-only method is great,” Carter said. “I just don’t understand why any other system would be preferred.”

He added that he thinks precinct voting is convenient and saves people time.

But the Republicans who advocated for this legislation failed to address another major issue: That counties have already had trouble finding enough people to staff polling locations, and if counties that use a vote center model were forced to return to precincts, they would likely have to hire thousands more workers.

The Arizona Association of Counties opposes the measure for that reason, as well as because voters have clearly shown that they prefer the option to vote early by mail.

While the bill would allow some early voting, unlike today, it would require all those who want to cast their ballot that way to provide an excuse. The only exceptions are for the elderly and disabled, people who must be outside of their precincts on Election Day and for citizens living overseas, including members of the military.

Democratic Rep. Mariana Sandoval of Goodyear urged a no vote on the bill, saying that what works for one county isn’t necessarily what’s best for all counties, and that each community should do what’s best for its own voters.

Sandoval added that the Cocopah Indian Tribe, located south of Yuma in Yuma County, recently asked for a voting center within its borders to make voting easier for its members.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.