Just before Arizona's PPE, voting by mail became a hot topic because that's when the Covid-19 pandemic became an unavoidable subject of conversation. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has called for conducting the August statewide primary and November general elections completely and totally by mail.
A handful of states already operate their elections using a vote-by-mail process. While Arizona Democrats have long pushed to join those states, local election officials and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs are now seeking a temporary change during the coronavirus pandemic.
It comes off like a partisan issue, but there are some Republican election officials who agree that the current crisis is not normal and all-mail ballots are necessary, even if Republican lawmakers don’t feel the same way.
Hobbs, a Democrat, announced one day after the March 17 Democratic Presidential Preference Election that she would seek help from the GOP-controlled Legislature to make the temporary switch.
“We are in unprecedented territory,” Hobbs said. “We don’t know where things are going to be in August and November.”
The Legislature did not respond to Hobbs’ request before recessing on March 23, and it won’t take up the issue when it does return, Senate President Karen Fann said.
“My Republican caucus members are not in favor of that,” the Prescott Republican said. “This is more of a partisan issue.”
Conversations leading up to the March election were difficult and stressful, Hobbs said, adding that she does not want election officials, poll workers or voters to put their own health at risk to cast a vote.
“Arizona has a proven track record at being good with mail-in elections,” she said. In Arizona, voters can join the Permanent Early Voting List, or PEVL.Given the fact that there will not be a proven effective vaccine for this severe respiratory virus anytime during 2020, vote-by-mail makes the most sense from a public health and safety perspective.
Right now, as Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes states in this video, Arizona has a robust Vote by Mail system/procedure. However, currently NOT all registered voters are set up to receive an early ballot and vote this way. His explanation makes sense and is worth the few minutes listening to him here.
But very recently, the subject became much more controversial, spurred on by insane claims spewed by the Orange Menace/federal government presider.
(CNN) During his daily coronavirus briefing on Tuesday, President Donald Trump made very clear that voting by mail -- an alternative many are suggesting to deal with the ongoing stay-at-home directives -- is a very bad thing. And more than that, he suggested, it's deeply corrupt.
"No, mail ballots, they cheat," said Trump. "OK, people cheat. Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country because they are cheaters."
Moments later, a reporter noted that Trump himself had voted absentee -- by mail! -- in the Florida primary last month. (Trump also voted absentee in New York in the 2018 election.) [...]
He echoed that sentiment in a tweet on Wednesday morning -- apparently while watching "Fox & Friends:
"Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn't work out well for Republicans. @foxandfriends"From the Guardian, on March 30:
Donald Trump admitted on Monday that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party.
The president made the comments as he dismissed a Democratic-led push for reforms such as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting as states seek to safely run elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic. [...]
“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends.So, state Rep. Shawnna Bolick (R-LD20 and wife of AZ Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick), in an op-ed published by the Arizona Republic on April 2nd, followed up on Trump's pronouncement by making false claims to exaggerate and misstate risks of voting by mail. One of the most obvious misstatements was in suggesting county recorders would need to hire and train many more election workers to process mail in votes.
Having been one such worker for the 2019 jurisdictional elections in Maricopa County, and having worked for several cycles at precinct and polling polling locations, I know that claim is absurd on its face. If there are 500 polling locations in Maricopa County in a given election cycle (I don't know the actual number at this time), an all-mail election would indeed mean more workers to process the mail in votes. But not 3,000 of them, as at least 6 workers who would be necessary per polling station then are no longer needed. In 2016, the station I worked had 2,000 voters vote just that election day.
Jeremy Duda's report in the AZ Mirror on April 16 debunked Ms. Bolick's claims.
Officials in states where everyone casts their ballot by mail say Republican claims, like those made by local leaders and even President Donald Trump, that such elections are havens for fraud and stolen elections aren’t true.
Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington have all-mail elections, meaning every registered voter is mailed a ballot. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, California, Nebraska and North Dakota allow counties to use all-mail elections, while 13 other states, including Arizona, permit some localities to do so.
Arizona elections officials have urged the GOP-controlled legislature to implement a similar system here for the 2020 election to ensure voting rights aren’t limited by the COVID-19 pandemic. [...]
Among the reasons cited by opponents was that all-mail balloting would be rife with fraud. Rep. Shawnna Bolick, R-Phoenix, penned an op-ed in the Arizona Republic warning that all-mail voting would compromise the integrity of elections, and several other GOP lawmakers have used their social media pages to peddle warnings that it would be more vulnerable to fraud.
President Donald Trump has joined that chorus, tweeting, “Mail in ballots substantially increases the risk of crime and VOTER FRAUD!”
States with all-mail balloting haven’t found that to be the case.U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in reports dated April 1, said,
“Vote by mail is so important to ... our democracy so that people have access to voting and not be deterred, especially at this time, by the admonition to stay home,” Pelosi told reporters.
Trump told Fox News on Monday that voting by mail would hurt the Republican Party. Pelosi rejected that argument.
“When I was chair of the California Democratic party many years ago, the Republicans always prevailed in the absentee ballots,” she said. “They know how to do this.”
Indeed, some Democrats fear voting by mail could disenfranchise minorities and low-income voters who tend to move more frequently.Nevertheless, local Arizona Republican elected officials have been taking their cues from Trump.
From Duda's news story (cited above),
Absent the legislature authorizing an all-mail election, Hobbs and Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, have announced plans to send notifications to every voter urging them to sign up for an early ballot.I saw a list from Arizona News Service (publishers of the Yellow Sheet Report and Arizona Capitol Times and more) of AZ lawmakers indicating which ones are on PEVL lists and which ones are not. But there are 89 records (and 90 members of the legislature) and a couple of the names are on more than one record. So, I don't feel comfortable posting the entire list at this time. However, notably worthy insight on the subject of this post still can be gleaned from the list.
House Elections committee members include:
Shawnna Bolick (R-LD20) not listed
Frank Carroll (R-LD22) YES
John Fillmore (R-LD16) YES
Jennifer Jermaine (D-LD18) NO
Warren Petersen (R-LD12) YES
Diego Rodriguez (D-LD27) YES
Athena Salman (D-LD26) YES
Raquel Teran (D-LD30) YES
Bob Thorpe (R-LD6) YES
Kelly Townsend (R-LD16) YES
Most (all?) elections related bills in Senate are heard in the Judiciary committee. Those members are:
Sonny Borelli (R-LD5) NO
Lupe Contreras (D-LD19) NO
Andrea Dalessandro (D-LD2) YES
Eddie Farnsworth (R-LD12) NO
Rick Gray (R-LD21) NO
Venden Leach (R-LD11) YES
Martin Quezada (D-LD29) YES
Also noteworthy but not on either of these committees at this time, Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita (R-LD23) who previously chaired House Elections. She IS on PEVL.
Three out of four of the Republican members of Senate Judiciary (including the very stubborn Eddie Farnsworth, who controls the committee) do NOT vote by mail. So it's easy to see why, at this stage, getting legislative approval for counties to conduct all-mail elections in August and November would be next to impossible.
From the Yellow Sheet Report (April 15, 2020)
A recent study by Stanford political scientists contradicts one popular claim made by opponents of universal vote-by-mail: that the system disproportionately benefits Democratic candidates...
Trump recently argued Republicans should oppose efforts to institute statewide mail-in voting. “Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans,” he tweeted (LINK).One might think that by now, GOP elected officials would know better than to just take Trump's word for anything that deals with data. He seems incapable of telling the truth, or perhaps even recognizing facts when they smack him in the face... BUT... it does seem to go without saying that he's primarily interested in suppressing Democratic voter turnout.
The study, published April 14, found that in three states with varying degrees of vote-by-mail implementation, the system “does not appear to affect either party’s share of turnout,” and “does not appear to increase either party’s vote share,” all while moderately increasing turnout at levels in line with previous literature on the subject (LINK).
The Stanford researchers examined voting-by-mail in three states, combining new data from California and Utah with existing data on the behavior of voters in all-mail elections in Washington State. The authors chose these states since in all three cases, mail voting has been expanded at the county level “in a staggered fashion” – providing the opportunity to compare turnout results with other counties in the same state where vote-by-mail hasn’t been implemented.
“Each of these three states’ reforms are slightly different, but all share a similar feature: counties adopting the vote-by-mail expansion mailed an absentee ballot to every eligible voter in the county, not just voters who had requested receiving a mailed absentee ballot,” the researchers write. “Voters can mail their completed ballot to their county elections office, or deposit their ballot in secure ballot drop-off locations throughout the county. Alternatively, each of these states’ reforms also replaces traditional polling places with Election Day voting centers throughout the county.”
From the Stanford study cited above:
The COVID-19 pandemic threatens the 2020 U.S. election. Fears that the pandemic could deter many people from voting—or cause them to become infected if they do vote—have spurred calls for major electoral reforms. As election administration experts Nathaniel Persily and Charles Stewart put it:
“The nation must act now to ensure that there will be no doubt, regardless of the spread of infection, that the elections will be conducted on schedule and that they will be free and fair.” Persily and Stewart recommend a nationwide vote-by-mail program to allow Americans to vote from the safety of their own homes, but many question the potential political consequences of such a policy.
President Trump declared that, if it was implemented, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” On the other hand, Brian Dunn, a former Obama campaigner and founder of a company that works on vote-by-mail programs, says that “There is justified concern that Democratic-leaning voters may be disadvantaged through vote-by-mail systems.” This debate continues in part because, in the academic literature, as Charles Stewart points out, “evidence so far on which party benefits [has] been inconclusive.” [...]
This paper has offered new data to offer the most up-to-date, most credible causal evidence on the effects of vote-by-mail on partisan electoral outcomes and participation. In our data, we confirm important conventional wisdom among election experts: vote-by-mail offers voters considerable convenience, increases turnout rates modestly, but has no discernible effect on party vote shares or the partisan share of the electorate.I am thankful that Fontes and Hobbs have already put thought into a work around. And I'm confident that voters will be fired up this year to obliterate all obstacles to eradicating the Orange Menace and returning our values of Liberty and Justice for all to the forefront.
Now, if you are an Arizona registered voter and want to ensure you are on your county's PEVL, you can RE-register to vote at servicearizona.com (the website reportedly will not be available for the next few days, but should be back up on April 21 or 22). When the question of whether you want to be sent an early ballot comes up, be sure to answer YES.
No comments:
Post a Comment