Arizona GOP election official has a plan to speed up voting results
Misty Severi
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A Republican official in Maricopa County, Arizona, has proposed new ways to get the results of elections out faster after certifying the results of the 2022 midterm elections took nearly a month.
Stephen Richer, the recorder for Arizona’s most populous county, released a 28-page memo earlier this month, which included proposals such as eliminating “late early ballots,” expanding Election Day operations, and extending the early voting period.
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“You have a very voter-friendly system that accommodates dropping off your early ballot on Election Day up until 7 p.m.,” Richer said in December. “But simultaneously, you have a whole host of people who want to be able to call the results of a close election within the first 24 hours. So then just everyone gets mad, and it’s real pleasant.”
Richer’s proposal to eliminate the “late early ballots” would give voters a cutoff time of 5 p.m. on the Friday before Election Day. The current process of allowing voters to drop off ballots even on the day of the elections caused chaos in the midterm elections, when approximately 290,000 early ballots were dropped off on Election Day.
Richer said he modeled the proposed elimination after examining the voting processes in Florida and Georgia, which require early voters to drop off ballots before Election Day. However, the suggestion has faced heavy criticism because dropping off ballots on the day of the election is an increasingly popular method in Arizona.
Newly elected Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) is not a fan of eliminating the same-day ballot drop-off, having spoken out against it when she served as Arizona’s secretary of state. A former Maricopa County elections official, Tammy Patrick, is also against the elimination.
“We need to make sure that policies are aligning with what the voters are asking for and what the voters do, in fact, in the course of their standard voting process,” Patrick told NPR. “The truth of the matter is that there’s never an official result for days, and in some cases, a few weeks after the election. It’s when those elections are close that people get antsy and want the immediacy of finality of that contest and knowing who is the projected winner.”
Richer said he understood that the suggestion might not be accepted but proposed expanding the early voting period from 27 to 32 days and expanding Election Day operations to Saturday through Tuesday.
“I wanted these conversations to be departing at least from a place of facts and a place of understanding as to how elections actually work. That’s productive,” Richer told the outlet. “What’s not productive is just making [things] up or accusing people of breaking the law, or all these conjectures and conspiracy theories. I didn’t want to spend another two years doing that.”
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There is currently no bill or piece of legislation to support Richer’s proposals; however, some GOP lawmakers in the Arizona House of Representatives, including newly elected Liz Harris, have supported getting rid of early voting altogether.