GOP wants to scrap Arizona early voting. The plan is 1 vote away from the November ballot

The Legislature is one vote away from asking Arizonans if they want to vote like it's 1990.

House Concurrent Resolution 2032 would abolish early voting, curb the use of vote centers and revert to election day-only voting at a precinct. It needs a vote of the full Senate to be sent to the November ballot, where voters would get the final say.

The proposal would cap years of efforts to reverse many of the election changes made in the name of voter convenience and efficiency.

Election officials call this "the big one" of 2024's suite of election-related legislation. That's because of its potential cost and wide-ranging changes to how Arizona votes.

How do Republicans want to change Arizona's voting laws?

HCR 2032 would:

• Scrap early voting and replace it with absentee-only voting. That would mean most voters would have to cast their ballots at the polls on election day.

• Dial back the use of vote centers in Maricopa and Pima counties, but allow them to continue in the state's other counties as long as the population remains below 500,000 people. Vote centers allow people to vote anywhere within their county of residence.

• Establish voting precincts of up to 1,000 voters. If precincts are in place in Maricopa and Pima, county authorities could then also authorize vote centers.

While the debate over precincts and vote centers has been rolling all legislative session, the abolition of early voting is new. Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, added the provision during the last meeting of the year of the Senate Elections Committee, which she chairs. She did not offer any explanation for her amendment.

Early voting has been practiced in Arizona for more than three decades, and is highly popular. In this month's presidential preference election, 95% of the vote in Maricopa County came in by mail or early voting, according to preliminary statistics.

But many Republicans in the wake of the 2020 presidential election have eyed the ability to vote early or by mail with suspicion. That culminated in a 2022 lawsuit from the Arizona Republican Party, which argued the practice was unconstitutional. The courts disagreed, and the practice continued.

The ballot referral would outline exceptions for mandatory voting at the polls. Absentee voting would be allowed for disabled people, those age 65 and up, voters living outside the state and are enrolled in an out-of-state college, overseas voters and active military members and their family members. Those voters would have to request an absentee ballot from their local county election office. They could cast it in person at early-voting sites set up for absentee voters or return it by mail.

Vote centers are another election practice that has grown in popularity, in part because they allow people to vote at any center within their county, instead of being limited to their home precinct.

The proposal was puzzling to Sandy Bahr, director of the Grand Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club.

“I don’t understand why you want to do anything at all that discourages voting," Bahr told the Senate Elections Committee.

She predicted the measure would fail if it gets placed on the ballot, given the popularity of early voting.

“But I encourage you to save time and reject it today,” she said.

But Alan Skillicorn, a Fountain Hills City Council member, said the current system has led to long lines and delays. That is discouraging, he said, and amounts to a form of voter suppression. He supported the measure, which passed the committee on a party-line vote with Republicans in support and Democrats opposed.

What issues do election officials see with the proposal?

The proposal to revert to precinct voting in the state's largest counties has technical hurdles, election officials say. Jen Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, put it succinctly when she addressed the elections committee March 18.

”We just don’t have the places and the people," she said.

To keep precincts at 1,000 voters, Maricopa County would need about 2,500 precincts, Marson told lawmakers. Currently, the county has 935 precincts and 235 vote centers.

Pima County would need to more than double the number of existing precincts to 626, she said.

When Maricopa County was still using precinct voting in the mid-2000s, election officials couldn't find enough places to house the 1,148 precincts required at that time, Marson said. Even attempts to double up precincts at one location failed to produce enough locations, she added.

The increase in precincts would demand an increase in election workers, a population already in short supply, Marson said. Counties have struggled to recruit volunteers for election tasks, due to increasing harassment and threats from people upset with elections and how they are run.

Other GOP election bills appeared fated for veto

While the current session has produced dozens of other election-related bills, many are presumed to be doomed to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs' veto stamp. Most of the bills that are still active have passed strict party lines, with unified Democratic opposition, a signal to Hobbs to reject the measures.

For example, Senate Bill 1097 would require school board candidates to declare their party affiliation, a move that Democrats argued against. Currently, school board races are nonpartisan.

Rep. Laura Terech, D-Phoenix, said playing up party affiliations only makes voters more cynical about school board policies.

Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, criticized Democrats for complaining the bill would harm democracy, arguing politics is part of a functioning democracy.

Other bills focus on vote center restriction or the return to precinct-only voting. But their provisions have been captured by HCR2032, which bypasses the governor and goes straight to the ballot if it gets approval from the full Senate.

Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-228-7566 and follow her on Threads as well as on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @maryjpitzl.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Republicans want ballot measure scrapping early voting