Another election has come and gone and unsurprisingly Arizona is yet again the butt of national jokes for taking weeks to process ballots and tabulate votes.
And while some in the corporate media still attempt to defend our vote-counting circus, most everyone is in agreement that big changes are needed. It does not take being an election expert to recognize that states with far greater populations, who also experience large rates of early voting, somehow get their votes counted election night or near to it.
It is a fix that is long overdue. Yet, for over five years the reform has continued to run into a political meatgrinder at the state capitol. Since 2019 our organization, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, has supported, championed and authored bills to ensure we get results on election night. And while Democrats in the legislature have been an obstacle to reform (they have universally opposed any reforms geared toward getting faster results), they have not been the only impediment to fixing the problem.
The real culprit is opposition from county “election officials.” For years our so-called election experts have worked overtime to stop any reasonable reforms to Arizona’s mail-in voting system. Their tactics are incredibly disingenuous. When people express their frustration about the glacial pace of vote counting, they clap back (usually with dripping condescension) that their hands are tied by existing law. But when lawmakers introduce bills to change those laws, those same election officials send their army of lobbyists down to the capitol to fight reform at every turn.
We already know what their strategy will be. First, they will complain that the proposed tabulation fix, while used in over a dozen other states, simply won’t work here. Then they will claim that they don’t have a position on any particular date for ending early voting in order to ensure quicker results. But when the legislature does pick a date (any date), it somehow becomes an “implementation nightmare.” By implementation, what they mean is that it may create some work for them, and they don’t like it.
The good news is that some of these roadblocks appear to be dissolving. We are encouraged to see that the Republican Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Vice Chairman Thomas Galvin has signaled support for meaningful changes to our election system. In addition, the election of pro-reform Recorder Justin Heap in Maricopa County should help break through the election administration resistance in our state’s most populous county.
There really is a very simple path to speed up election results in Arizona without restricting access to the ballot box and maintaining or even increasing the integrity of the process. We can make elections secure, efficient and accessible. To start, cutting off early voting on the Friday before the election provides time for election officials to process those ballots before they open back up on election day, meaning those ballots will be tabulated and results ready to be posted as soon as the polls close.
Allowing voters to tabulate their own early ballots on site after providing identification means less time doing signature verification, removing ballots from envelopes, inspecting them to ensure there are no problems and tabulating them. A step further would be requiring objective ID on mail-in ballots, so that instead of relying on subjective signature verification, counties can quickly compare objective numbers.
Taken together, these modest reforms will bring us closer to getting results on election night and, at the latest, election week. The question is: Are the “election officials,” their taxpayer funded lobbyists and their friends in the media finally willing to step back and let it happen?
Scot Mussi is President of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing a pro-growth, limited government agenda in Arizona.
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.
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