2022 Legislative Bill Tracker: Civic Engagement and Voting Integrity Post-session Update
Updated 07/12
The bill tracker and analysis below on civic engagement and voter integrity is courtesy of LAMA’s coalition partner Arizona Faith Network and their team of legislative analysts. The bills below are deemed to be Priority Bills due to the speed in which they are moving through the Arizona legislature.
Voting rights bills we tracked that were signed into law in the 2022 legislative session are: HB2236 (Hoffman); HB2237 (Hoffman); SB1013 (Townsend); HB2243 (Hoffman); HB2492 (Hoffman). Scroll below for details
Lutherans have long been involved in the fight to protect voting rights in the United States. Today, the ELCA is guided by our social statement: “Freed in Christ: Race, Ethnicity, and Culture,” as well as the 2013 ELCA Social Policy Resolution: “Voting Rights to All Citizens,” which directly calls on us to speak out as advocates and engage in local efforts such as voter registration and supporting legislation that guarantees the right to vote to all citizens.
Readers concerned about voting integrity in Arizona are encouraged to register their opinion with a “Thumbs Up” or a “Thumbs Down” on each bill using the Request To Speak (RTS) system. Based on our Lutheran call to advocate for and protect voting rights in the U.S., LAMA does not support the bills below.
Voter Registration
HB 2170 (Kavanagh) - election mailings; third-party disclosures : Didn’t pass
Requires any communication that includes a VR/early ballot form, or a link to that form, to include a disclaimer “Not From a Government Agency”
Likely unconstitutional compelled speech
Doesn’t apply to communications that are misinformation or intentionally misleading!
Kavanagh amendment specifies that any nongovernmental person or entity that mails or sends by email must include the required disclosure.
HB 2236 (Hoffman) - voter registration; request required: Signed by Gov. Ducey 5/27/22
Prohibits automatic voter registration, which does not currently exist in Arizona but is being proposed both in the Fair Elections ballot initiative and federally
HB 2237 (Hoffman) - same day voter registration; prohibition: Signed by Gov. Ducey 5/23/22
Prohibits same-day voter registration, which does not currently exist in Arizona but is being proposed both in the Fair Elections ballot initiative and federally
HB 2617 (Chaplik) - voter registration; cancellations; causes: Vetoed!
Summary: changes to the process by which county recorders cancel people’s voter registrations, with the potential to result in eligible voters being kicked off the rolls
Analysis:
HB 2617 begins with a provision that mandates cancellation when the county recorder knows, receives, or obtains information on a voter's death. This should specify what the reliable sources of that information are, Arizona vital statistics, Social Security Administration, ERIC, etc.; it should not be left open-ended, lest party hacks start submitting lists of people they perceive to be dead based on faulty name-matching methodologies that fail to take into account middle initials, last 4 SSN, and other information.
Further down, they add to the same mandatory cancellation list instances where the county recorder receives information that the voter is not a US citizen. For the same reasons, we discussed in relation to HB 2492, this is a recipe for disaster given old government transaction data will show pre-naturalized folks who were ineligible but now are eligible. THERE IS NO DATABASE OF US CITIZENSHIP. I have no idea how they would go about proving that someone is NOT a US citizen, unless that person was denaturalized by a federal court. The SAVE database, leaving aside the errors it contains, is well-documented as not being a source of up-to-date information on US citizens. Now if they do have information from yesterday or last week and they contact the voter, that would be something, but they need to specify the procedure here, because otherwise it will embrace a whole lot of unreliable and/or outdated information on US citizenship or the lack thereof.
In the same provision, they mandate cancellation if you get an out-of-state driver's license or state ID. That's not a lawful basis to remove someone. Someone might well maintain homes in a few states and obtain a driver's license in another state. That does not mean that they are ineligible to vote in Arizona. I suspect a lot of rich donors to the GOP would be pissed about this provision, as they may well have homes and vacation homes in multiple states, and have cause to obtain DLs in multiple states.
The threat of referral for criminal prosecution for these last two bases is nonsense, but as long as the relevant criminal statutes say willfully registered as a non-citizen, it should be fine. Though they can of course intimidate people with these provisions even if they ultimately go after exceedingly few. But I wouldn't pick a fight on this. The worse part of subsection C is that they are not sending pre-cancellation notice, just post-cancellation notice. To comply with the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, they need to send pre-cancellation notice and give people an opportunity to respond. This is particularly so since they currently have an open-ended statute here that allows the county recorders to rely on any information, not just specifically enumerated sources for information on the bases for removal. The Supreme Court's due process cases require more process and safeguards where there is a higher risk of erroneous deprivation of a statutory entitlement such as continuous voter registration.
What follows is a mandatory monthly database comparison and list maintenance process. The county recorder must compare their voters to the DHS SAVE database (which is a not an up-to-date list of US citizens, full stop), DOT's databases (which always has outdated information on people's citizenship status, because people get driver's licenses or state IDs prior to naturalization), the Social Security Administration database (that's fine, that's used to determine new deaths), and the "ELECTRONIC VERIFICATION OF VITAL EVENTS SYSTEM MAINTAINED BY A NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR PUBLIC HEALTH STATISTICS AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS" (I have never heard of this, but I know for certain it is not an up-to-date list of US citizens, because no such list exists in the US of A).
We should double-check whether people attest to a lack of US citizenship on their jury questionnaire. People do lie on those to get out of jury duty. Beyond that, the provisions on this should underscore that the jury questionnaire was filled out and relayed to the county recorder AFTER the date on which the voter registered.
HB 2786 (Hoffman) - voter registrations; ballot requests; source: Didn’t pass
Stops county recorders from using non-official PEVL request forms for signature matching
SB 1013 (Townsend) - secretary of state; federal form: Signed by Gov. Ducey 6/06/22
Secretary of State must request the federal government add state-specific instructions on the federal registration form asking for proof of citizenship. The federal agency (EAC) will say no.
Vote By Mail/Early Voting
HB 2238 (Hoffman) - ballot drop boxes; prohibition: Dead
Summary: Prohibits the use of “unmonitored” drop boxes - unmonitored is not defined
Analysis:
Dropboxes are widely used in rural and tribal areas
Voting centers and drop boxes were pioneered by rural, republican leaning county recorders like Yavapai and Yuma as a way to save money.
In-Person Voting
HB 2602 (Bolick) - polling places; emergency voting centers: Dead
Prohibits county recorders from establishing emergency voter centers unless there is a “genuine emergency” such as “war, civil unrest or natural disaster.” Appears to be a response to Fontes creating emergency voting centers on the weekend before the general election in 2020.
Voter ID
HB 2494 (Hoffman) - voter registration events; posting: Held in Senate
Re-passes a law passed in last year’s budget and then struck down on process grounds, requires elections officials to post their attendance at voter registration events on their websites within 24 hours of the event.
Taking Power over Elections Officials
HB 2378 (Bolick) - election lawsuits; settlements; approvals: Failed in Senate Third Reading
Summary: Allows county recorders to block court settlements
Analysis:
Retread from last year’s 2302
Tries to solve a problem that does not really exist -- and it does it in an improper and ineffective manner.
Basically, the legislature is trying to dictate to courts how election cases should be handled -- and giving any single Recorder the equivalence of the UN Security Council veto authority over any settlement in cases involving the Secretary of State.
County Recorders already have the ability to intervene in voting and elections cases that could materially impact their abilities to perform their required functions.
There are court procedures for doing that; there are standards; and there are responsibilities. And one of those responsibilities is to participate in good faith in settlement negotiations especially when mandated or sanctioned by the court. By intervening, the Recorder becomes a full-fledged participant in the lawsuit.
Allows any Recorder, without any meaningful standards, and without any of the responsibilities and duties that go along with participating in a lawsuit and fashioning good faith settlements -- it allows a Recorder who has done none of those things to come in and say “no, that would be difficult for me” and effectively thwart a settlement.
Bad policy. It would turn out to be a nightmare in its implementation. Election cases could be dragged out forever causing damaging uncertainty.
HB 2379 (Bolick) - election procedures manual; statutory conflict: Held in Senate
The Manual “shall provide for transparency and election security to the maximum extent allowed by law,” whatever that means. Also restates that statutes supersede the Manual when they are in conflict (that’s already true, that’s how laws work). Allows the Legislature to provide “experts in electronic voting systems” who can recommend changes to the EPM.
HB 2780 (Kavanagh) - voter lists; images; voting records: Didn’t pass
Requires the county recorder to publish, 10 days before the primary and general election, a list of all voters who are eligible to vote in the election, including a list of inactive voters.
Establishes that the county recorder must post the voter list on their website and redact the voter's DOB, driver license number, nonoperating ID number and SSN before publishing or posting the voter list.
States that after the primary or general election and five days before the county canvass the county recorder must post in a digital format:
a) A list of voters and their method of voting;
b) All ballot images with the unique ID# from the ballot; and
c) A sortable format of the cast vote record.
Requires early and provisional ballot tabulators to imprint a unique ID number on each early ballot to allow the ballot image to be linked to the physical ballot.
Asserts that early and provisional ballots must be separated, tabulated and stored by precinct.
States that election day ballots must be stored by precinct after tabulation.
Instructs the officer in charge of elections to sort and store ballots in a manner that allows for convenient retrieval.
Ballot Measure Attacks
SB 1094 (Mesnard) - petition signatures; description; invalidity: Didn’t pass
Requires initiative/referendum circulators to read the 200-word description to the voter before they sign (or give the voter time to do so). Pretty difficult to enforce, on a practical level.
Not Obviously Problematic (Keep an Eye on it)
HB 2243 (Hoffman) - voter registration; state residency; cancellation: Signed by Gov. Ducey 7/06/22
Adds to the voter registration form a statement that if a voter permanently moves to another state, their registration will be cancelled. (That’s what happens already, this doesn’t appear to change the policy at all).