Another election has come and gone, and once again Arizona showed the nation that it doesn’t know how to count votes. Like a bad movie we are forced to watch every two years, rampant delays in processing early ballots left voters waiting over a week to find out who won key races in the state.

Virtually everyone around the country watching our slow-motion election train wreck, from major media outlets to national pundits, agreed that fixing Arizona’s tabulation process is long overdue.

Everyone, that is, except Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and her partisan Democrat allies in the Legislature.

This shouldn’t be a total shock to those that have followed previous attempts to reform our election system. Over the last couple of years Democrats have opposed popular election reforms like requiring basic proof of citizenship to vote, all while millions were pouring in illegally through the southern border. They argued against commonsense voter ID laws, claiming our elections are safe and secure without it (and California democrats even banned voter ID outright). 

And now, after Arizona was again one of the last states to finish ballot processing, the Democrats remain opposed to ensuring we have election night results. 

So what’s the Democrats’ excuse? Curiously, Hobbs’ omitted any mention of fixing our broken election system in her state of the state address. Her allies in the Legislature, when pressed on the issue, have resorted to calling demands for election night results a  “manufactured crisis.”  

Arizona has become the laughingstock of the country, and Arizona Democrats seemingly want to keep it that way. 

It’s their choice if they want to represent a fringe minority that doesn’t care how badly our elections operate. But the rest of us want reform, and that is what our organization is fighting for at the state Legislature.

At the top of the list is moving the current deadline for returning early ballots. Currently, every voter in Arizona is eligible to receive a mail-in ballot, and that ballot may be returned at any time until 7:00 p.m. on Election Day. The problem with this system is that ballots returned within the last couple days cannot be processed and tabulated by election night. This past election several hundred thousand ballots were dropped off on Election Day, causing a weeklong delay in processing the results.

Simply setting a deadline – Friday before the election – would immediately eliminate this delay. Voters would still have more than three weeks to fill out their ballots and either return them by mail or drop them off with the county. And voters can still vote in person – early and on election day.

And if we want to add even more ease, access and security to our process, the silver bullet is on-site tabulation of ballots at the polling location. Want accessible elections? Allow for on-site tabulation. Want secure elections? Allow for on-site tabulation. Want efficient election results? Allow for on-site tabulation. It is a win-win-win, for the voters, and for the state.

Voters that enjoy the convenience of filling out their ballot on their own time in their own home, can continue to do so. But if they do not want to leave it to the Post Office to deliver their ballot, and they don’t want to drop it off, or they do not drop it off by the Friday cutoff, then they can show up at a polling place and tabulate their ballot themselves.This means more voters showing ID before casting their ballot, and it means their ballots are tabulated immediately. 

These reforms have proven to work in other states like Florida. And they shouldn’t be new ideas to lawmakers or Hobbs, since these are ideas our organization has promoted for years.

We have the opportunity to increase access, increase security and increase the efficiency of our elections. In other words, we could finally no longer be the laughingstock of the country in the next election and all to come. The question is, will Arizona Democrats and Hobbs stand in the way?

Greg Blackie is the deputy director of policy for the Arizona Free Enterprise Club

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.