Arizona to vote on amendment to strengthen election security
Regional News
Audio By Carbonatix
11:30 AM on Wednesday, October 7
(The Center Square) - Arizonans will vote Nov. 3 on a proposed constitutional amendment to strengthen the state’s voting laws and curb foreign influence on elections.
Voters will decide the fate of Proposition 144, which would require government-issued identification to cast a ballot and prevent noncitizens from voting in Arizona elections.
Proposition 144 would also allow voters to have their ballots counted at polling locations and stop foreign nationals from making campaign contributions that could impact an Arizona election.
Don Palmer, a senior legal fellow for election integrity at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, told The Center Square that states need to close a federal loophole that lets foreign nationals influence elections. Currently, federal law prevents foreign nationals from donating to candidates' campaigns, but it does not stop them from donating to ballot measures. In July, the U.S. House passed the Stop Foreign Funds in Elections Act, which would close this loophole. The bill currently sits in the Senate.
A key sticking point for proponents and opponents is how Proposition 141 will affect mail-in voting.
Katelynn Contreras, a policy strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, said the nonprofit is concerned the proposition could harm mail-in ballot voting.
She told The Center Square that if Proposition 144 is implemented, it would make it harder for Arizonans to vote because it would “drastically alter Arizona’s elections by making mail-in voting more time-consuming, less secure and inaccessible.”
Will Humble, the executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, a nonprofit public health advocacy organization, said the proposition would eliminate mail-in voting, which would especially affect seniors and people with disabilities.
Eliminating mail-in voting would mean “elected officials don’t necessarily need to care as much about those populations," Humble told The Center Square. "They know they'd need fewer votes than when mail-in voting was accessible."
Palmer said the proposition would not end mail-in voting.
The proposition “adds security measures to [mail-in voting] particularly with the voter ID requirement,” the legal fellow with the Heritage Foundation explained.
Vote ID is already required in Arizona for in-person early voting and Election Day voting at the polls, Palmer said.
According to Contreras, when the Legislature considered House Concurrent Resolution 2001, which became Proposition 144, proponents were “vague” about how it would affect mail-in voting.
“One of the critical features of the proposition is that it could require voters to provide ID concurrent,” Contreras explained.
During the legislative session, when supporters were asked what it means to provide an “ID concurrent with casting a ballot,” they could not answer, she said.
Contreras questioned whether this meant people would need to include their driver’s license number on their ballot or include a copy of their photo ID in their ballot.
“There are concerns about how realistically this would work, particularly because of the vagueness of the language,” she said.
The Center Square reached out to the Arizona Senate Republicans' office, but it did not respond before publication time.
If Arizonans approve the proposition, “it is going to disenfranchise a lot of people,” Humble noted.
In last week's debate against Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, state Rep. Alex Kolodin, a Republican who sponsored HCR 2001 and is running against Fontes in the Nov. 3 election, called Fontes’ claim that Proposition 144 would prevent Arizonans from voting by mail a lie.
The Center Square reached out to Fontes’ office, but it said he was unavailable to comment.
According to Palmer, the proposition’s provision allowing on-site tabulation would help Arizona get election results faster, adding that speeding up election results will help improve “voter confidence in Arizona.”
Palmer said one reason Arizona elections are taking so long to tabulate is that mail-in ballots are “coming in at the last minute.”
He noted this puts “a lot of strain on election officials” trying to tabulate ballots and release results.
Contreras said Arizona is one of the last states to finalize its election results because the state has a “large number of independent voters,” which makes it difficult for Arizona to “immediately call elections.”
The state Legislature did not give the county recorder offices money to buy these tabulation machines, she said, adding that these offices are “really strapped for cash when it comes to being able to operate elections in the status quo now.”
The secretary of state’s website says, as of July, Republicans made up 35.4% of Arizona’s 4.3 million registered voters, while independents and Democrats accounted for 34.6% and 28.11%, respectively.
