Posted on 02/22/2025 10:49:31 AM PST by John Semmens
Arizona is one of those states where counting the ballots can take weeks after election day has passed. In an effort to expedite the counting of ballots Republicans in the legislature passed a bill modeled on the system used in Florida where all the ballots are counted on election day. Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed this legislation.
"The main hold up in counting ballots is the requirement for signature verification," Hobbs asserted. "One obvious solution is to do away with signature verification. Another solution would be to do away with voter registration. Since voting is a human right why not just give a ballot to every person who requests one. They could immediately cast it on the spot at any polling place in the state. Or they could take it with them and mail it in or drop it off at a later date. There would be no need to verify anything and the counting could proceed more expeditiously."
"An unappreciated benefit of my approach is that it would prevent a Secretary of State from trying to sabotage the opportunity of voters of an opposing Party by supplying too few ballots, or ballots that don't fit the machines, or machines that break down in areas where the opposing Party has more registered voters," Hobbs argued. "Since their would be no voter registration no one would know the strength of any Party in any district. Even if they tried to guess, any voter could cast a ballot in any polling place in the state."
"The only potential problem that might arise with my preferred system is that it is possible that more votes could be cast than there are persons over the age of 18 in the state," the Governor conceded. "These kinds of discrepancies have occurred from time-to-time in a few locations, but have never, to my knowledge, resulted in an election being declared invalid. Since there would be no way of knowing who cast the excess ballots there would be no proof of who was cheating. I view this as a minor issue because all sides would have an equal opportunity to cheat. Realistically, I think that this method would be the fairest and most efficient way to conduct an election."
State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) called Hobbs' veto "a missed opportunity to increase voter confidence and reduce frustration on election night. Her alternative suggestions would go even further toward destroying voter confidence that the one-person, one-vote standard of a healthy democracy could ever be attained. Luckily, we have prepared a resolution that encompasses the same reforms of the legislation she just vetoed to go on the November 2026 ballot. So, eventually voters will directly determine the type of voting system they want."
It’s GOP’s fault. They should go along democrats and vote same way as they do. No signature verification, no voter ID and etc. they control much large state. Go “find” voters and have them vote. Problem solved
The AZGOP did this to themselves in 2020, failing to pursue the fraud in Maricopa County as if their lives depend upon it.
Funny things.
This was actually (slightly) bipartisan bill. Supported by few Dems.
By banning mail votes drop until the end of elections, it would actually benefit Dems as most of those are dropped by Republican voters.
But, she just hates Rep ublicans.
The main hold up is determining how many illegal ballots it will take to win.
POS governor...
Pretty lame response from the state GOP leader.
I have yet to see one election reform bill that Democrats support. I wonder why that is.
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