Arizona
Ballot Security
What Politicians Say
After Biden narrowly won the state, Trump and his allies filed seven unsuccessful lawsuits attempting to halt vote counting or overturn the results there, and Republicans representing the state in Congress later objected to certifying its electors.
In 2021 and 2022, the Arizona legislature considered more than 250 bills to change how elections are run, including proposals to allow the legislature to overturn an election, dismantle the state’s widely used vote-by-mail system or require millions of ballots to be counted by hand within 24 hours of polls closing. The state also conducted a highly controversial partisan review in Maricopa County.
The more dramatic proposals failed, and Republican Governor Doug Ducey eventually signed about two dozen measures that make only minor changes.
Still, those who support Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud won Republican nominations for governor, secretary of state, attorney general and US senator.
The Democratic gubernatorial nominee, meantime, is current Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, ensuring that arguments over the 2020 election will be central in that race.
State House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan.6 attacks, lost re-election to a Trump-endorsed challenger.
Ease of Voting
Despite proposals to end or restrict Arizona’s hugely popular vote-by-mail system, it remains largely unchanged since 2020, with one exception.
In 2021, Republican state lawmakers changed the rules surrounding its early voting list, which has more than 3 million registered voters. The law, which goes into effect after the 2024 elections, requires voters to cast an early ballot at least once every four years to remain on the list.
If they don’t, local elections administrators will send a postcard asking if they want to remain on the list, although research shows similar postcards sent by elections offices are mostly ignored.
Voting rights advocates in the state say that the change could lead to tens of thousands of voters being removed from the early voting list, which could have an effect in a state where the presidential election was decided by just over 10,000 votes.
But it’s unclear which party that would hurt more. Vote-by-mail has long been popular among Republicans, Democrats and independents in Arizona, and several studies of the 2020 election have found no evidence that expanding it in other states boosted President Joe Biden.
Arizona is the only state in the country that does not have an explicit language guaranteeing the right to vote in its constitution.
A group of activists is trying to get a measure on the November ballot that would expand voter registration, protect early in-person and mail-in voting and make it harder for legislators to overturn an election, among other things.
Ballot Security
While Georgia, Florida and other states passed massive elections overhauls, Arizona tackled the issue piecemeal in nearly two dozen separate bills enacted since 2020.
Those include measures to require more voters provide proof of citizenship, to remove dead voters and convicted felons more regularly from the rolls, and to ensure that party affiliation is not visible in mail-in ballot return envelopes.
Other new laws seek to reduce the number of ballots that are left uncounted by requiring local elections administrators to contact voters who didn’t sign their mail-in ballot envelopes and ensure the envelopes do not reveal the voter’s party affiliation.
Another measure requires elections administrators to post a warning in polling places about the risk of stray marks on a ballot causing it to be rejected – the subject of lawsuit by the Trump campaign after the 2020 election.
Other laws seek to fight potential election fraud by requiring mail-in ballot envelopes include a request to “return to sender” if the voter has moved, making it a felony to impersonate an elections official, requiring voting machines be secure and banning private donations to run elections, such as the grants the state received from Meta Platforms Inc Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.
Read More: Zuckerberg’s Election Aid Spurs GOP Drive in 30 States to Ban It
The legislature also passed a bipartisan bill to increase the margin for automatic recounts from 0.1% to 0.5%.
How Politicians Responded to the 2020 Election
Elected officials in Arizona have been among the most vocal supporters of Trump’s claims.
Republican state lawmakers launched a controversial partisan review of Maricopa County, the state’s largest, led by an outside firm with no experience auditing elections. The review confirmed Biden’s win.
State Representative Mark Finchem,who spread baseless claims of election fraud and called on the legislature to appoint its own electors,won the Republican nomination for secretary of state. The GOP attorney general nominee, Abe Hamadeh, has said Biden did not win and promised to use his prosecutorial powers in office to go after unnamed people he says stole the election.
US Representative Paul Gosar raised the objection to his own state’s electors on Jan. 6, calling the certification of Biden’s win “sedition” and praising the people who attacked the Capitol as “peaceful patriots.”
During the House select committee hearings on the Jan. 6 attack, Trump aides testified that US Representative Andy Biggs sought a presidential pardon for his role in attempting to overturn the election.
Three of the state’s four Republican representatives objected to certifying Biden electors from their own state and four objected to Biden electors from Pennsylvania. Two also signed on to an amicus brief supporting the Texas lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to intervene.