Thanks To Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs, Arizonans Can Keep Expecting Delayed Election Results
In recent years, Arizona has gained a reputation for failing to provide voters with definitive election results on election night. And thanks to the latest move by Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs, that’s going to be the state’s reality for the foreseeable future.
On Tuesday, Hobbs vetoed legislation (HB 2703) passed by Arizona’s GOP-controlled legislature that sought to enhance election officials’ ability to deliver timely election results to voters. The measure cleared the state House and Senate in party-line votes last week, with Republicans supporting the bill and Democrats opposing.
Among the most notable changes proposed in HB 2703 is a provision moving up the deadline by which voters must return early ballots. As Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda previously noted to The Federalist, Arizona’s late production of election results is largely due to an issue within current law, which allows voters to drop off their early mail ballots by 7 p.m. on Election Day.
In Arizona, all early ballot voters are required to provide their signature on the ballot envelope affidavit, which is then compared to the one in their registration records. Once election workers confirm the signatures match, the ballot is processed and tabulated.
The week of the Nov. 5, 2024 presidential election, election officials estimated Maricopa County alone received more than 200,000 early ballots from voting locations on Election Day. All of those Maricopa early ballots, as well as those returned on Election Day in other counties, were required to go through the aforementioned signature verification process — a review that took Maricopa County officials weeks to complete.
According to an Arizona House GOP press release, HB 2703 aimed to alleviate this problem by “[s]etting a firm deadline for early ballots returned at voting locations—7:00 PM on the Friday before Election Day—to ensure prompt processing and reduce late ballot backlogs” [emphasis added]. The bill additionally sought to permit counties to “provide on-site tabulation during early voting, including on the Saturday and Monday before Election Day.”
The Arizona Legislature revised state law in 2022 to authorize counties to implement “on-site tabulation” for early ballots, although none of the state’s 15 localities reportedly chose to do so prior to the 2024 election.
Speaking with The Federalist, Arizona House Speaker Steve Montenegro noted additional provisions in HB 2703 geared towards improving Arizona’s elections, including enhancements to chain of custody rules for in-person early ballots and address verification requirements for early mail voters “to make sure we’re sending [early ballots] to the right [people], and not sending it to two locations or the wrong location.” The bill also includes a provision effectively requiring that schools be available as polling locations during elections.
“When we close those loopholes, we can make sure that we have a better process,” Montenegro said. This is about “restoring the public trust [and] showing that we can have efficient-run elections.”
In her veto, Hobbs regurgitated baseless Democrat talking points that HB 2703 “needlessly restrict[s] Arizona citizens’ freedom to vote,” and fear-mongered that the bill’s provision requiring schools to serve as polling sites “undermine[s] the learning and safety of students in public school districts.” The Democrat governor also contended she previously proposed “compromises” that would “increase voter freedom while speeding up election results,” repeating a claim she made last week when expressing initial opposition to the bill.
“I offered common sense compromises to count votes faster, and they were rejected,” Hobbs wrote in a Feb. 13 statement.
According to Montenegro, however, Hobbs’ claims that her proposals would “count votes faster” don’t hold water. The House speaker noted that the “ideas [Hobbs] presented” to Republican lawmakers were “nonstarters.”
Correspondence from Hobbs’ office to GOP legislators and Swoboda indicates this to be the case. In the Feb. 7 email obtained by Votebeat Arizona, Hobbs General Counsel Bo Dul is documented, in part, proposing a series of “trade-offs” in which the governor would potentially sign a bill moving up the early ballot drop-off deadline only if the final legislation included leftist-backed priorities such as same-day voter registration.
With Democrats, “it’s a narrative that’s always perpetuated that they want to ease up on [so-called] ‘voter suppression,”’ Montenegro said. “Actually, when we don’t have elections that respect voters, that’s voter suppression — [because] people lose trust and don’t want to show up and vote.”
Despite Hobbs’ veto of HB 2703, Arizona Republicans aren’t giving up on moving forward proposals that could help alleviate the state’s delayed production of election results.
The GOP-controlled legislature is fast-tracking a resolution (HCR 2013) containing many of the provisions within HB 2703 that, if passed by both chambers, would go to voters as a ballot initiative in the 2026 midterm elections. The proposal includes HB 2703’s provision moving up the early ballot return deadline to the Friday before Election Day.
HCR 2013 passed the House in a party-line vote on Monday and now awaits consideration by the Senate.
For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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