On Tuesday (May 11), Arizona Governor Doug Ducey (R) signed a new law creating a mechanism to remove voters from automatic mail-in ballot lists. It marks another move toward election reform for U.S. Republicans after the 2020 election.
Shortly after the state Senate passed the new measure on Tuesday, Ducey quickly signed it, saying it was about the integrity of elections and in addition “no Arizona voter will lose their right to vote because of this new law.”
Democrats opposed the bill, but Republicans narrowly dominated Arizona’s House and Senate to pass it. Republican state lawmakers said the state’s creation of a new mechanism to remove voters’ names from previously almost rarely modified mail-in voting lists would help keep the lists up to date, taking into account such things as deaths and residents moving out of the state.
The measure would stop automatic mail-in ballots to voters if they do not participate in early voting for two consecutive election cycles. Republicans say voters will be warned before they are removed from the list.
Until then, about 75 percent of Arizona voters are registered on the state’s permanent early voting list, which means they are automatically mailed a ballot in every election. Typically, voters stayed on the list until they asked to have their voter registration removed, their registration was canceled or their mail was returned as undeliverable.
Republican Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita said at a recent news conference, “We’re not going to back down from what’s reasonable, what’s common sense, what protects the integrity of our elections.”
Since late April, Arizona Republicans have received court authorization to begin counting more than 2.1 million votes for the 2020 election in an attempt to find out the questionable ballots. Democrats have strongly opposed the effort and called the efforts a Republican backlash against President Biden’s victory in Arizona by more than 10,000 votes.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump has maintained his position that the 2020 election was improperly questioned and is leading a series of investigations. On Tuesday, Trump wrote on an independent platform developed by his team, “All states should pass voter ID laws (i.e., require ID to vote), and many other fair and comprehensive election reforms, such as eliminating mass mail-in voting and ballot collection, so that we no longer have rigged and stolen elections. The people are demanding real reform.”
The passage of the Arizona bill comes as Republican lawmakers in Texas are debating new election reforms, and before that, Republican governors in Georgia and Florida have signed new election reform measures into law. Several states, including Kentucky and Virginia, have also passed expanded voting rights laws this year.
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