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AZ government mulls laws for faster ballot counting
Arizona often lags behind others when it comes to vote counting, but there is a new push to speed up the process. FOX 10's Brian Webb has more.
PHOENIX - There’s a new push to speed up ballot counting in Arizona.
Our state often lags behind most others when it comes to vote counting.
Instead of taking hours, it can sometimes take several days.
It took Arizona until November 15th to finish counting ballots, ten days after the election and several days after most other states.
2024 Arizona General Election results
General Election results for President, Arizona's U.S. Senate, Congressional districts; Maricopa County Sheriff, Attorney, Recorder, Supervisor; State House and Senate races. The polls closed at 7 p.m. MST on November 5, 2024.
Now Arizona lawmakers are proposing plans to speed up the process.
Election workers already count ballots around the clock, but they quickly fall behind other states to complete the task.
Voters are sharing their piece.
"Better safe than sorry, give me an exact vote," said one person.
"If Florida can count twice the amount of votes in half the time, its wrong," said another.
"Take your time if its safer. I feel like if it's just taking your time to verify it and make sure everything's accurate, there isn't anything wrong with that," said a third man.
A new bill has been introduced by Republican State House member Warren Petersen.
"With the amount of technology that we have, we should be able to. And just by virtue of the fact that all the other states are able to do it - almost all the other states are able to do it - we can do it too," Petersen said about speeding up the count.
He says the measures address the two main hiccups: An earlier deadline to drop off early mail-in ballots and early in-person voting will require a state ID and signature instead of putting it into an envelope.
He is proposing to move the deadline for early mail-in ballots to Friday at 7 p.m. before Election Day.
"Now, when you vote early in person, you’re putting your ballot into an envelope and then later on somebody has to signature verify and open up the envelope so we’re taking that process away," Petersen said.
The November ballot came on two pages and covered 265 contests. Nearly 250,000 early ballots were dropped off on Election Day.
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Democratic State Senator Analise Ortiz says this is manufactured outrage by Republicans.
"It looks like its has a nice excuse of ‘let’s go ahead and speed up the election results,’ but I’m just not buying it because if a single voter is turned away or discouraged from waiting in line, that means that they are not making their voice heard. The Democracy everyone should have should be free and fair and easy access to make their voice heard," she said.
This bill would also add two days to the early mail-in ballot period, moving the deadline to the Monday before Election Day.
It’ll most likely be a couple of months before this bill makes it to the Governor’s desk.