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Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
AZ Supreme Court: ‘Unborn human being' in abortion ballot description wasn't partisan
Photo by Jim Small | Arizona Mirror Nearly eight months after the Arizona Supreme Court allowed 'unborn human being' to be included in a description of the state's abortion rights initiative, the court explained why it determined the phrase wasn't politically biased. In a 24-page opinion, Justice Kathryn King wrote that a Republican-controlled legislative panel didn't violate state law when it approved a summary of the Arizona Abortion Access Act that started off with a sentence that included the words 'unborn human being' because it was simply quoting existing law. The court ruled 5-2 to let the Republican-crafted language stand. 'The reference to 'unborn human being' when describing 'current state law' does not depart from or inaccurately describe the text of existing law or the proposed measure; does not contain extraneous adjectives, adverbs or commentary chosen by the (Legislative) Council; does not omit relevant contextual information; and does not selectively emphasize one omission in the initiative to the exclusion of others,' King wrote. 'In this case, the Council recited the precise term used in existing law to illustrate the changes the Initiative would make if adopted.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX In a dissenting opinion, Justice Ann Scott Timmer wrote that quoting state law doesn't make the description impartial if the law being quoted was written to advance an ideological viewpoint. For instance, she wrote, lawmakers referring to a fetus as a 'sweet, innocent baby' in state law wouldn't automatically make that term somehow neutral. State law requires that the Legislative Council, a panel composed of lawmakers from both parties but controlled by the GOP majority, draft summaries of each ballot measure for a voter publicity pamphlet, which is meant to give Arizonans a quick rundown of what they'll be voting for in the next election. That same law mandates those summaries be impartial, and the courts have long held that language 'tinged with partisan coloring' is unlawful. Last year, the panel, made up of eight Republicans and six Democrats, approved a description of the Arizona Abortion Access Act that included the phrase 'unborn human being' in the first sentence. The Arizona for Abortion Access Committee quickly took the legislative panel to court, arguing that the summary should be thrown out and rewritten with 'unborn human being' replaced by the neutral and medically accurate term 'fetus.' In legal filings, Republicans claimed that 'unborn human being' is impartial because it's pulled directly from the 2022 law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks that would be overturned if the initiative passed. While Arizona law demands impartiality in publicity pamphlet summaries, it also allows for a description of how proposed ballot measures might affect current laws. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge sided with the abortion rights group, writing that the term is 'packed with emotional and partisan meaning' — something that Arizona courts, including the state's highest court, have long rejected. Less than a month later, the state Supreme Court overturned that ruling. Despite what abortion advocates viewed as an attempt from anti-abortion Republicans to put 'its thumb on the electoral scale,' an overwhelming majority of Arizona voters cast their ballots in November in favor of Proposition 139, enshrining it in the Arizona Constitution and making the procedure a fundamental right. The court's majority — Justices King, John Lopez, Bill Montgomery, Robert Brutinel and John Pelander — agreed with Republicans that quoting existing law is as impartial as it gets, and 'fetus' is just as loaded a term as 'unborn human being.' Notably, King and Lopez were among the four justices who reinstated a near-total abortion ban from 1864 last year, and Montgomery faced criticism when he refused to recuse himself from the case in light of his past statements that Planned Parenthood was responsible for overseeing the 'greatest generational genocide known to man.' The Arizona branch of Planned Parenthood was one of the main groups involved with the creation and advocacy for the abortion rights initiative. King, writing for the majority, pointed out that the summary description for Prop. 139 'began by accurately describing' the 15-week law and ended by outlining the impacts of the ballot measure, and even used the proposition's own language, including the terms 'fetus' and 'fetal.' On top of that, King wrote, another Arizona law recognizes a 'human being' starting at conception and even widely accepted dictionary definitions refer to unborn human beings when explaining what a fetus is. (That law was also part of the legislation that enacted the 15-week abortion ban.) She chided abortion groups for fixating on the phrase and said the courts have historically been concerned with Legislative Council analyses that are biased or inaccurate, and not with whether a specific term, especially one that is already enshrined in state law, is appropriate. 'This Court has never found that an analysis violated the impartiality requirement where, as here, the Council used precise statutory language to describe existing law and then explained the text of the proposed measure and its effects,' she wrote. 'Instead, this Court has concluded that analyses were not impartial where they departed from or inaccurately described the text of the existing law or the proposed measure or failed to include relevant contextual information.' The justices also argued that Arizona law prefers the use of 'unborn human being' over 'fetus' because the latter might confuse voters. The law governing how to write publicity pamphlet summaries calls for 'clear and concise' language that avoids technical terms. 'Fetus,' according to the high court's majority, may be too difficult for Arizonans to understand, and the difference between it and 'unborn human being,' the justices posited, is akin to the difference between 'myocardial infarction' and 'heart attack.' 'Put simply, (the law) recognizes that the use of non-technical terms where possible is more likely to assist voters with understanding and rationally assessing a proposed measure, in particular with voters who lack specialized training or expertise in a technical area,' the majority concluded. King added that removing the phrase 'unborn human being' would amount to the high court tipping the scales in favor of abortion rights groups. She argued that some voters might be swayed by the difference in language, and that lawmakers were trying to highlight the 'moral' policy change that Prop. 139 was seeking to achieve. 'By accurately noting that existing statutory law describes a pregnancy as involving an 'unborn human being' and then identifying that the Initiative proposes adding the terms 'fetus' and 'fetal' into the Arizona Constitution when creating 'a fundamental right to abortion,' the Analysis provides background information about existing law and the measure's proposed changes,' King wrote. 'This approach impartially puts voters on notice of exactly what they are voting for or against.' By lobbying for replacing the phrase with 'fetus,' the justices said that abortion groups were really trying to push for a description that would benefit their initiative. And that's unlawful, because Arizona state law expressly bars legislative council from taking a side. 'If 'fetus' were used, the Council would have deviated from existing law's text and placed its thumb on the scale in favor of the Initiative under the guise of 'neutral terminology,'' the court ruled. Timmer, the court's chief justice, and Justice James Beene disagreed, arguing that waving away the phrase as nothing more than a direct quote ignores its partisan origins. Timmer wrote in the dissenting opinion that, even though the U.S. Supreme Court toppled Roe v. Wade and gave states the power to regulate abortion, the debate over the procedure continues to be as 'politically, morally, philosophically, and emotionally divisive' as ever. And the central question in that debate is when, exactly, a pregnant woman is carrying an 'unborn human being.' By inserting that phrase into the publicity pamphlet summary, Timmer said, the Legislative Council took a side in that argument. She also reminded the court that, while Arizona law demands impartiality from Legislative Council and its summaries, no such requirements exist for lawmakers. That means that a ballot measure summary which quotes a law also risks carrying with it any biased language or motives that were enshrined in that statute. Timmer lambasted the majority opinion for unhesitatingly accepting the phrase 'unborn human being' as impartial simply because it was pulled from existing law and said it was a shaky foundation on which to approve legislative council summaries. 'To illustrate with a far-fetched example, if the legislature had used the term 'sweet, innocent baby' in (the 2022 law), I doubt anyone would view that term as 'impartial' if used in describing an abortion-related measure, although it would be accurate to say that the term is used in the statute,' she wrote. 'Our job is to determine whether the analysis is impartial as required by (Arizona law), meaning we cannot rubberstamp language as 'impartial' merely because the legislature used it in an affected statute.' But while the majority opinion clarified that it wasn't intended to set a precedent for automatically regarding every state statute as impartial, Montgomery conceded as much in a concurring opinion. Just because a phrase as colorful as 'sweet innocent baby' is included in a hypothetical state law, he wrote, doesn't immediately render a Legislative Council description which quotes it biased. Instead, the court must look at the analysis as a whole. And, he concluded, simply because 'unborn human being' has been a sticking point for advocates on both sides of the abortion debate, it doesn't mean that the summary of Prop. 139 should have been thrown out. 'The mere fact that the phrase might also be used in debates concerning the legal rights and statuses that ought to be afforded (or not) to human fetuses/unborn human beings does not render this use of the phrase partial,' Montgomery wrote. In the dissenting opinion, Timmer and Beene criticized the Legislative Council summary for advancing a phrase that sought to sway voters and convince them, with alarming language right off the bat, that Prop. 139 directly conflicted with their 'moral interests.' 'In starting the legislative analysis by using the term 'unborn human being' when paraphrasing the statute that currently prohibits abortions after fifteen weeks' gestation, the Council promoted that value judgement that a fetus is a 'human being',' Timmer wrote. 'For that reason, I cannot find that the legislative analysis is impartial.' Timmer also took issue with the claim that keeping 'unborn human being' in the summary gave voters the opportunity to decide which term to back. Prop. 139, Timmer wrote, was never about what language Arizona should use. 'Word choice in Arizona law was not the issue in the Initiative,' she said. 'Indisputably, the Initiative did not give voters the option of inserting the term 'unborn human being' into Arizona law.' King accused Timmer of failing to address the fact that 'fetus' carries just as much partisan implication as 'unborn human being,' and argued that only by including both terms could Legislative Council create a fully impartial analysis. But Timmer responded that the courts have never accepted 'cancelling out' influence as a solution, and said that the justices are only responsible for identifying unlawful summaries. There's no reason, she wrote, that the legislative council couldn't have avoided any impropriety by simply leaving both terms out. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Why can you praise Jesus on your license plate, but not celebrate being gay?
Illustration by Jim Small | Arizona Mirror As I was driving to get lunch the other day, I saw a luxury SUV with the license plate 'JESUSNM' in the lane next to mine, a pretty obvious reference to 'Jesus' name,' a common way that Christians end a prayer. What isn't obvious to me is why that plate is allowed but the state has banned drivers from getting 'JESUSRX' on their license plate. Or 'HOLYGST.' Or 'SNOFGOD.' Or 'SPIRIT.' And what about atheists and anti-theists? Drivers who want 'NOGOD' or 'IH8GOD' are similarly out of luck. Likewise, the skiing enthusiast who wants 'SNOGOD' can't get it, nor can the hockey player who hopes to adorn a car with 'PUCKGOD.' It isn't just religious messages that are curiously banned: So are 'BGAY,' 'GAYFMLY,' 'LGBTQ1A' and 'QUEER.' And the plate 'IH8EVR1' is on a car that parks most days near the Arizona Mirror's office, but 'OMGIH8U' is verboten. All of those are among the more than 92,000 personalized license plates that are banned in Arizona. The list largely includes profanities and sexual references — some incredibly clever — but also raises questions about whether the Arizona Department of Transportation is arbitrarily and inconsistently applying state law and regulation to illegally stifle free speech. But finding that out was far more difficult than it should have been. When I asked ADOT for data on rejected personalized license plates in early January, a spokesman told me the agency actually doesn't review plates when people request them, so it doesn't actively reject anything. Instead, the website for the Motor Vehicles Division is programmed to exclude specific words or combinations of letters and numbers that ADOT has determined violate state law or administrative code. Drivers don't ever know that the license plate they want is on the banned list. Enter a banned word into the personalized plate creator and the site returns the message that the chosen plate simply 'is not available,' the implication being that some other driver already has that wording. That automatic rejection system went online in 2020, so that's where agency records of manually disapproved plates ended, the ADOT spokesman told me. OK, I thought, but what about the list that the MVD website uses to surreptitiously reject vanity plates? ADOT rejected my public records request for that, claiming that it would take too much time and be too expensive to produce the list. Of course, those aren't valid reasons for rejecting a request for public records under Arizona law. The Mirror's attorneys agreed, and set about writing a letter to ADOT explaining just how wrong they were and threatening litigation if they didn't turn over the list of banned license plates. Lo and behold, about three weeks later, the records landed in my inbox. It shouldn't have taken a couple of thousand dollars in attorney's fees and the threat of a lawsuit to force ADOT to follow the law and turn over information that affects drivers every day — whether they know it or not — and potentially impinges on the free speech of Arizonans. This week is what's known as Sunshine Week, a nonpartisan collaboration that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government. It occurs in mid-March every year, coinciding with the birthday of James Madison, a driving force behind the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Madison once wrote that 'knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.' When ADOT initially refused to provide this information, they weren't just violating state law — they were undermining the very foundation of democratic governance that Madison envisioned. If it takes a team of attorneys and the threat of litigation for a media organization to obtain a simple list from a state agency, imagine the barriers facing ordinary citizens without such resources. This isn't just about quirky license plates — it's about whether our government truly answers to the people it serves, or whether transparency is merely a convenient fiction. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Senate Republicans push voting changes that could limit voting centers
Photo by Jim Small | Arizona Mirror Arizona's Republican legislators are taking another crack at voting law changes, after the Democratic governor vetoed their recent attempt to make the state's elections more like Florida's. But the bills the Arizona Senate approved along party lines, with only Republicans in favor, are almost certainly headed for a veto from Gov. Katie Hobbs as well. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Two of the proposals, Senate Bill 1097 and Senate Bill 1098, were sponsored by Sen. Jake Hoffman, leader of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus. One bill, SB1097, would force every public school operated by a school district to close on each primary and general election day and requires schools that have gymnasiums to act as a polling location, at the county's request. The proposal would get rid of a provision in state law currently that allows school superintendents to refuse to serve as polling places because of safety concerns or lack of space. It would also require all other government offices to serve as polling places, at the county's request. While Hoffman's proposal would force schools to close to students on Election Day, it would bar teachers from taking time off that day, something that Sen. Mitzi Epstein, D-Tempe, described as a 'slap in the face' to educators. 'It sounds like this law would imply that a teacher is less than other people who do work,' Epstein said. 'I cannot fathom why, just because you're a teacher, you cannot take leave.' Senate Bill 1097 would also take a less extreme approach to requiring counties to use precinct-based voting than a bill sponsored by another Freedom Caucus member that already passed through the House and the Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee. A precinct-based voting model requires each voter to cast a ballot at their designated location, and if they vote at the wrong location, it won't be counted. In contrast, any registered voter in the county can cast a ballot at any voting center in the county. Most Arizona counties use voting centers or a mix of precincts and voting centers. Unlike Rep. Rachel Keshel's House Bill 2017, Hoffman's SB1097 would still allow the use of voting centers, but would give priority to precinct-based locations, only allowing voting centers to supplement precinct polling places. Maricopa and Pima counties, where nearly 75% of the state's voters live, both use voting centers exclusively. Before voting against the bill on March 5, Democratic Sens. Theresa Hatathlie, Lauren Kuby and Priya Sundareshan all said they were concerned that, due to an ongoing difficulty finding poll workers, SB1097 would result in a de facto ban on voting centers since staffing precinct locations would take priority. There are 935 precincts in Maricopa County alone, according to voter registration information posted by the county recorder's office in January. The county opened 246 voting centers during the November 2024 election. 'It's impossible to do all of it at once,' Sundareshan said. Kuby and Sundareshan both pointed out that the use of voting centers makes voting easier for people who work far away from home or who recently moved, and eliminates provisional ballots that won't be counted because they were cast at the wrong location. Hoffman accused the Democrats of not reading SB1097, which he said would make voting more convenient by forcing schools to provide more polling location options to counties. Hoffman told Epstein that if the requirement for teachers to work on Election Day made her so angry, she should take it up with all the school districts that already have blackout days for time off in their teaching contracts, like the days following fall and winter break — or, in some cases, Election Day. Sundareshan pointed out that those blackout days were negotiated with the teachers and their unions, not mandated by the state. Hoffman's Senate Bill 1098 would require voters who drop off early ballots at a polling place to show identification and sign an affidavit promising that they're legally allowed to drop off those ballots. In Arizona, voters can only return their own ballot, ballots from family members or housemates or from a person for whom they are a caregiver. Those who violate that law could face a felony charge and more than a year in prison. Right now, voters can drop off their early ballots in drop boxes or at polling locations without having to provide identification, and the ballots are validated by election workers verifying the ballot envelope signatures. Republicans lawmakers have been pushing this year to cut down on signature verifications for 'late-earlies,' or early ballots dropped off on Election Day, saying that voters demand quicker election results. The signature verification process slows down the reporting of election results when hundreds of thousands of voters drop off their early ballots on Election Day. On Feb. 19, Hoffman told lawmakers on the Judiciary and Elections Committee that SB1098 gets rid of the 'honor system' in which those dropping off early ballots don't have to prove they're legally allowed to do so. He claimed that the process would only take 'an extra 30 seconds' at the polling location to provide ID or sign an affidavit when dropping off ballots. Hatathlie said she was concerned that SB1098 included such a serious penalty but included no funding to educate voters. 'Maricopa County is not a state, so we have to look past that and beyond that to the rural counties as well,' Hatathlie said. Both of Hoffman's bills will next head to the House of Representatives for consideration. ' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Arizona House Republicans pass sweeping anti-trans ‘biological sex' bill
Photo via Getty Images/Illustration by Jim Small | Arizona Mirror Following in the footsteps of Donald Trump's blitzkrieg to erase transgender people from American life, Republicans in the Arizona House of Representatives are aiming to do the same thing in the Grand Canyon State. On Wednesday, lawmakers voted 32-27 along party lines to pass House Bill 2062, which would enshrine a narrow definition of biological sex into state law based on a person's physical reproductive characteristics. Democrats who voted against the bill said it was an attempt to scrub transgender people from existence and urged Republicans to instead focus on the problems that voters elected them to solve, like improving education and making housing more affordable. Rep. Stephanie Simacek, D-Phoenix, called the bill 'absolutely disgusting' and told her GOP colleagues they should be ashamed that it was being discussed on the House floor. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Lisa Fink, R-Glendale, would allow schools and other state agencies to bar trans people from using the bathrooms or locker rooms that align with their gender identity. Trans Arizonans would also be banned from joining athletic teams or living in domestic violence shelters that reflect their identities. Fink told House lawmakers on Wednesday that her bill was simply about defining the terms 'man' and 'woman' and 'male' and 'female' in state statute, and ensuring that data collected by the state is 'biologically accurate.' The freshman lawmaker didn't mention her history of anti-trans advocacy. Fink is the president of the Protect Arizona Children Coalition, which advocates against what it calls 'gender ideology programming,' and she's one of the mothers who attempted to intervene in and defend Arizona's transgender girls sports ban in the ongoing lawsuit challenging it. Republican attacks on transgender people have been ramping up over the past several years and have seemingly reached a boiling point, with Trump issuing an anti-trans executive order on his first day back in office and another last week aimed at transgender athletes. During a Feb. 5 debate of the bill on the House floor, Rep. Lorena Austin, D-Mesa, the only nonbinary member of the Legislature, said they were disappointed that not one Republican came to speak with them about the impacts of Fink's proposal on the transgender and genderqueer communities. 'I'm not asking you to be a part of that community, but I am asking for you to understand where I come from,' Austin said. Rep. Patty Contreras, a Phoenix Democrat and co-chair of the Legislature's LGBTQ caucus, said that she and other members of the community would not be bullied into silence by 'ignorant, hateful' legislation that she said goes against the teachings of Christ that many of her Republican colleagues say they follow. 'I'll never understand how this government feels it necessary to bully those who are vulnerable,' Contreras said. The proposal would greenlight discrimination against trans people in public spaces, but also open the state up to possible lawsuits from trans people who experience discrimination from state agencies that use the law to create their policies. Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Lupe Diaz of Benson and Rep. Khyl Powell of Gilbert, said they based their votes on their Christian faith, with Powell adding that he thinks 'we all believe in God.' 'I find it impossible to believe the concept that God makes mistakes,' Powell said. 'Why can't we humbly submit to his will that we are his sons and daughters? We are male and female, and we should be grateful for the privilege to live and to learn and become more like him.' Austin pointed out that the legislators represent Arizonans of many different faiths, and cultures, some that recognize the existence of transgender people, including some Native American tribes. On Feb. 5, Contreras told the other lawmakers that she attended a transgender day of remembrance at a local church last year to honor trans people who were murdered because of their gender identities. 'They were murdered because hate and discrimination are being taught and legislated in bodies such as this,' Contreras said. 'Hate has no place in our society. Whether you recognize it or not, people are being killed because of bills like this.' Contreras said she believes that legislation like HB2062 contribute to hate and violence toward trans people, and open them up to harassment, especially when the gender on their identifying documents doesn't match their outward appearance. Fink said that she did not think her bill would erase anyone or allow discrimination, claiming that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects transgender people from being discriminated against. But with Trump in the White House and a Republican supermajority controlling the U.S. Supreme Court, the protections afforded to transgender people are far from settled, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The measure next heads to the Arizona Senate for consideration, where it's likely to pass the Republican majority. But it's headed for a veto from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who has vowed to block any legislation that curtails the rights of the LGBTQ community, and who vetoed a similar proposal last year. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
10-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Republicans want Arizona to count votes like Florida. It's not that simple.
Photo by Jim Small | Arizona Mirror Republican lawmakers in Arizona say that voters are desperate for 'Florida-style' election reforms that would speed up the state's slow finalization of results. Those legislators have proposed numerous changes that critics say would disenfranchise some voters, but they argue would put an end to the state's elections being viewed as the 'laughingstock of the country.' 'If you give your right to vote a priority, then you have plenty of options to vote,' Rep. Khyl Powell, R-Gilbert, said during a Feb. 3 Federalism, Military Affairs and Elections Committee meeting. 'The Constitution of the United States was written to protect our rights, not to provide equal things.' Arizona's Republican lawmakers have made changing election processes — and specifically faster results — a key part of their goals this year, and have proposed several pieces of legislation that would make our elections more like Florida's SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX House Bill 2703, the proposal that House Republicans have most recently rallied around, would cut off voters' ability to drop off their mail-in ballots at any polling location in their county at 7 p.m. the Friday before the election. It would also require voters on the Active Early Voter List — who receive a ballot in the mail automatically — to confirm their address each election cycle or be booted off the list. Currently, voters can drop off their mail-in ballot at any polling place in their county through the end of voting on Election Day, typically without waiting in line. If this proposal becomes law, voters could still drop off their early ballot through 7 p.m. on Election Day, but only at their county recorder's office, or after standing in line at a polling place so they can show ID and feed their ballot through a tabulator. Proponents of the bill say that putting an end to so-called 'late earlies' or early ballots dropped off on Election Day and the weekend prior, would significantly speed up the tabulation of results. The more than 200,000 late earlies dropped off on Election Day during the past couple of elections slow down the reporting of results because workers have to process them and verify voter signatures before they can be tabulated. The proposed changes would still leave Arizona with 27 days to vote, significantly more than Florida. Those who support the bill say it will speed up results, providing Arizonans with more confidence in their elections, and that it won't disenfranchise voters — something its authors asserted in the text of the bill. 'By enlarging the overall early voting period and maintaining other voting rights and processes such as in-person early voting, in-person election day voting, early voting by mail through the Friday before election day…the proposed changes in Arizona election administration processes will not have a substantial net effect on either access to or the ease of voting in Arizona,' the text of the bill says. Florida has put a lot of hard work into improving its elections over the past seven years, and election experts like Genya Coulter, an elections analyst for the OSET Institute, told the Arizona Mirror that voters are generally happy with them and trust the results. Some changes in Florida election law since 2020 include more restrictions and security for ballot drop boxes and a requirement to request a mail ballot before each election. But Coulter, who has a background as a Florida poll worker and trainer, said voters there think those trade-offs are worth the feeling of security they provide. 'If you have a population that generally trusts their election officials, implementing changes generally goes a lot more smoothly than if you have widespread distrust, even if it's unwarranted distrust,' she said. Over the past 18 years, Arizona has posted its final election results in an average of 13 days after the election. But it's only been in the last several years, when Democrats began winning statewide races that had previously been dominated by Republicans, that the delay in finalizing results has become a problem for Republican voters and elected officials. The result has been fabricated claims that a longer counting time is designed to let Democrats commit fraud and steal election victories. Many of those people point to Florida, where nearly all election results are posted on election night, as the ideal system. But there are marked differences between Florida and Arizona when it comes to county size and geography, who administers the elections and how the population is dispersed. 'There is always something you can learn from another jurisdiction,' Coulter said. 'Never underestimate that. But before you do a comparison, you do have to realize that there are differences in the infrastructure that allow for certain things to be easier to do than others.' One of the most notable differences between Arizona and Florida are the size and number of counties in each state, as well as the distribution of the population among them. Florida has 67 small counties, compared to Arizona's 15 geographically giant ones. Collier County, Florida's largest by land mass, takes up nearly 2,000 square miles, compared to Coconino County in Arizona at more than 18,500 square miles. That means that the Floridian who has to drive to their Supervisor of Elections office to drop off their early ballot on Election Day will have, at most, a one-hour drive. In several Arizona counties, that drive could take more than two hours. And voters who live in the northernmost part of Apache County, on the Navajo Nation, are more than three hours away from their county recorder's office. Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, the chairman of an ad hoc committee created this year to workshop the numerous Florida-style proposals and to hear input from stakeholders, told the Mirror that this drive time was only an issue for a small group of people and that he would be open to solutions for the small number of people it might impact. George Diaz, the lobbyist for the Arizona Secretary of State's Office, urged the lawmakers on Feb. 3 to take into account the long drive from Chinle to the Apache County Recorder's Office in St. Johns, and to consider creating an alternative drop-off location in the northern part of the county. GOP committee members did not agree to that change. Instead, Kolodin argued that another change in the bill, to allow counties to continue in-person early voting over the weekend prior to the election, would actually provide more opportunities for Arizonans to vote. Currently, in-person early voting ends the Friday before the election. There are different requirements for dropping off an early ballot and voting early in person. Voters who drop off an early ballot don't have to show ID because they sign an affidavit to prove that they're registered to vote. Voters who cast an early ballot in-person at a polling place have to provide identification. Hugo Polanco, a lobbyist for All Voting is Local Action, told Kolodin during the Feb. 3 committee meeting that proposed changes in HB2703 disproportionately hurt rural and tribal voters who often live far from polling places and have unreliable mail service. 'For these voters, Election Day drop-off isn't just convenient, it is essential,' Polanco said. 'Arizona lawmakers should make it easier for eligible voters to participate, not harder. HB2703 is an attack on voting rights.' Polanco also criticized an amendment to the bill that Kolodin said was made in response to feedback from voting rights advocates. The change would require voters in counties with fewer than 500,000 residents to verify their addresses to remain on the Active Early Voter List every two election cycles. Voters in the more populous counties — Maricopa, Pima and Pinal — would still have to verify every cycle. This amendment 'treats voters differently based on county size,' Polanco said. In a heated exchange, Kolodin asked Polanco why the committee should work with voting rights advocates if they criticize the changes that they asked for. 'This change might seem from your perspective like it helps rural or tribal voters, but it does not,' Polanco answered. 'And it's not anything that voting rights activists asked for. Working with rural county election administrators is not the same as working with voting rights activists. Those are different things.' After years of disagreements between the Arizona Association of Counties and Republicans who proposed election overhauls, the majority of counties support HB2703, due in part to Kolodin's agreement to incorporate multiple amendments that they requested, including the less-frequent address verification. During a Jan. 29 meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on Election Integrity and Florida-style Voting, Natalia Sells, another representative of All Voting is Local Arizona, told the committee that the requirement for voters to reaffirm their addresses every election cycle would put an additional burden on Indigenous voters. Early ballots mailed to voters on the Navajo Nation already take weeks to arrive, Sells said, giving those voters significantly less time than others to fill out and return their ballots. 'I feel like this bill does not support the rural voters back home,' Sells, who is Navajo, told the panel. Florida's population at 22 million is much larger than Arizona's 7.4 million, but the people in Florida are more evenly dispersed among the counties. Miami-Dade, Florida's largest county has a population of around 2.6 million, compared to Maricopa's 4.2 million. 'There are certain jurisdictions, I think, in some areas where, if you've got one gigantic county and then you've got a bunch of little tiny counties, obviously most of the funding is going to have to go to the larger county,' Coulter said. 'And so I think the more evenly spread out you can allocate the funding, the more consistent performance you have with elections.' Many of the Republicans backing the proposed Florida-style election changes are the same people who voted last year to get rid of no-excuse early voting in Arizona, which accounted for 85% of ballots cast early in the 2024 general election, according to the Arizona Secretary of State's Office. But last year's proposal to end voting by mail, which was implemented by Republicans in 1991, didn't make it through the Senate. Kolodin repeatedly claimed during elections committee meetings over the past few weeks that, according to polling, a 'supermajority of voters' supported all of the election changes that Republicans had proposed in HB2703. But Kolodin refused to tell the Arizona Mirror what entity conducted the poll, much less provide the polling itself. Instead he read the questions, results and methodology aloud over the phone. 'I'm not not sharing that, it doesn't matter if you have the methodology,' he said. Kolodin claimed that it was not either of the House elections committees that commissioned the poll, which would be subject to an open records request, but another entity that he refused to name. That contradicted what Kolodin said during the Feb. 3 committee meeting, that 'this body' — presumably meaning the elections committee or the House of Representatives — conducted the poll. 'We asked the voters and a supermajority of them say, 'We want this,'' Kolodin said during the Feb. 3 meeting. 'In what sense can this still be fairly classified as hurting voters?' A more transparent poll found the opposite. According to an August 2024 survey by the Center for the Future of Arizona — with questions methodology and results listed online — 63% of voters 'believe we should encourage voter participation and continue to make it easy to vote over having election results sooner.' The poll, conducted by Highground Public Affairs, surveyed 500 likely voters from across Arizona, 34% Democrats, 38% Republicans and 28% independent voters. The survey had a margin of error of +-4%. Critics of Arizona elections have been singing the praises of Florida elections for several years. But a key difference between who administers elections in each state didn't come up during several lengthy public committee meetings regarding the proposed changes to Arizona elections. In Arizona, elections are administered at the county level through a partnership between recorders and the county board of supervisors. In Florida, the whole job is handled by a county Supervisor of Elections, a position that focuses solely on elections. That means Florida's election supervisors don't have to deal with coordination between two separate offices, and the people in charge of administering their elections aren't also tasked with responsibilities like recording plats and deeds or the day-to-day operations of county government. The bill was forwarded out of the Federalism, Military Affairs and Elections Committee to the full House of Representatives by a vote of 4-3 along party lines, but it's unlikely to make it into law. 'If proponents want faster election results, they should come to the table with common sense reforms that speed up election results while protecting the right to vote,' Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs wrote in a Feb. 3 statement. 'Instead, they are attempting to jam through a partisan, political bill that will make it harder for Arizonans to vote. I am willing to discuss how to get election results faster, but not if it costs Arizona voters their right to be heard at the ballot box. If this partisan bill reaches my desk, it will be met with my veto pen.' But Republicans have a workaround for that, with House Concurrent Resolution 2013, another Florida-style election change proposal that would go to the ballot in 2026 if approved by both legislative chambers, circumventing the governor's veto. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
