On Nov. 9, the Associated Press called Arizona for President-elect Donald Trump, making it the final state to be called by the media and have its electoral votes allocated in reporting the results of the presidential election four days after Election Day. As president of the Arizona Senate, I know this delay can never happen again. We must have immediate certainty about election results, especially for one of the most critical states on the electoral map.
While the eventual outcome of this presidential election between Trump and Vice President Harris was known in the wee hours of Nov. 6, the delayed reporting of Arizona’s electoral contribution could have caused unnecessary angst and mistrust with men and women around the country had it been a closer result. We know this does not need to be the case with our elections. That is why we are continuing to look to our neighbors across the country to mirror some common sense and bipartisan election reforms to bring more transparency and certainty to Arizona’s system.
Florida has quickly turned into one of the models of election integrity and certainty in the United States. Over the past few cycles, the state has managed to count most of its votes within hours of polls closing. Most, if not all, of the races are called, the electoral votes are assigned, and the nation quickly moves on to other states.
This commitment to election integrity, transparency, and certainty in Florida didn’t just happen. Who can forget the “hanging chads” debacle in 2000 between former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Al Gore? Florida realized that its citizens deserved immediate answers to its elections, and its officials have delivered for their voters. In the 2024 general election, over 3 million Floridians voted by mail, more than 5 million voted early, and over 2.5 million cast their ballots on Election Day. Ninety-nine percent of those ballots were counted before midnight — a remarkable feat!
What makes Florida’s election system the envy of much of the Western world? Florida has key policies governing its elections that provide maximum integrity, transparency, certainty, and security. These include a clear separation between vote by mail, early voting, and Election Day voting. Vote-by-mail ballots can be returned at early voting locations, but on Election Day, they must be brought to the office of the supervisor, the equivalent of Arizona’s county recorders, rather than be dropped off at every polling place. During early voting, there are no envelopes, which is common sense. Envelopes should be used for vote-by-mail voters, not in-person voters. In Florida, early in-person voters tabulate the same ballots on the same machines used on Election Day. They just do it during the early voting window. Finally, Election Day voters vote on Election Day by tabulating ballots at polling places. Additionally, Florida law requires counties to post the number of received and uncounted vote-by-mail ballots on election night — addressing a concern that perplexes many voters across the nation who cannot figure out how many ballots might be outstanding in their respective states.
My team and I, along with several state senators, representatives, and county elected officials, recently met with Florida’s secretary of state to discuss how to implement these commonsense reforms in Arizona. I am hopeful that Democrats and county officials will join us in our efforts to improve our election systems for the Arizona voters we are privileged to serve. Election integrity, transparency, efficiency, and certainty shouldn’t be a partisan problem. Unfortunately, it has become a Republican versus Democrat catfight in which many of our friends on the Left are unwilling to consider reforms that might give our constituents more assurances about their sacred right to vote.
Consider one bill that my Republican Senate colleagues and I attempted to pass in 2023, which would have required those who decided to hold on to their mailed ballots until the Friday before Election Day to follow the same voter ID requirements as everyone else when dropping off their ballots. Not only would this legislation have allowed everyone coming to the polls on Election Day to be treated fairly, but it also would have eliminated the need to validate signatures on hundreds of thousands of ballots, which delays results for days or weeks in our state. This commonsense bill passed along party lines in both the Arizona Senate and House, and it was vetoed by our Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs. The governor didn’t have much of an excuse for her action, simply stating that “this bill fails to meaningfully address the real challenges facing Arizona voters.” There have been other reasonable bills that Republicans have been unable to acquire Democrat support for over the past couple of years that would have helped expedite the results of our state’s elections.
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Even with more support coming for our quest to speed up Arizona election results on election night, including an unlikely endorsement from a columnist in our state’s major newspaper, Hobbs and her Democrat allies in the state legislature appear to have dug their feet in, unwilling to consider significant reforms that would bring more certainty to our system. This is a shame, and it’s not helping any of our voters.
In January, the Arizona Senate and House will reconvene for another legislative session, and I will immediately reintroduce bills that would reform our state’s election system. We should enact unique fixes for our state, but no one should be afraid or reluctant to mirror a system that works, such as Florida’s. Again, election integrity, transparency, and certainty are not red-and-blue matters. They are an American matter. Our constituents deserve to know that all their elected officials are working together to provide maximum trust in our systems — especially when it comes to our votes.
Warren Petersen is president of the Arizona State Senate.