This week, we are urging you to contact your state Senator and voice your opposing to a pressing election-related law. HB2547 seeks to ban county election departments from using the voting center model, despite its popularity and history of success, as well as limit precinct size and restrict early voting. This bill is in the last stages of passing and we expect the Senate to vote on it soon. Weigh in on it today!
What’s In This Bill?
The full text of HB2547 is available here.
The first thing this bill does is limit the size of a voting precint. It requires all county boards of supervisors to draw precinct boundaries that do not include more than 1,000 registered voters.
This bill also eliminates the current policy that allows counties to set up Voting Centers in addition to or instead of location-based precints.
Lastly, this bill removes the ability of county recorders to establish early voting locations.
What do these changes mean?
Several years ago, the state of Arizona digitized all of its voter rolls. This means that it is much easier to store and access voter information for an entire county. The Voting Center model equips each voting location with these full, digitized voter rolls, which allows any voter can vote at any Voting Center, instead of needing to report to a specific precinct based on their address. This makes it much easier for people to vote, especially people who commute for work, live in densely populated areas, or people like college students, who might live somewhere different than their permanent address.
Several counties in Arizona have introduced the Voting Center model to their elections; some counties still set up location specific precincts in addition to open voting centers, while other counties, most notably Maricopa county, have turned all of their voting locations into open Voting Centers.
This change has been especially popular in Maricopa county, as it is the second largest voting jurisdiction in the country, servicing well over 2 million registered voters. Maricopa county is also geographically large, and many people work quite far from their homes. Voting centers have taken a lot of the confusion out of voting for Maricopa county residents; a voter can walk in anywhere they see a “Vote Here” sign or to whichever location is closest, and request a ballot. This way, voters do not have to be sent away to different locations, or track down ever-shifting precinct data.
The limit on precinct size also poses a problem. Obviously, it wouldn’t be good to have too few voting locations forced to service too many voters. However, the necessary number of voting locations, and the volume of traffic that can be handled, is specific to each county, and county boards of supervisors are better equipped to decide on those limits for their own communities. In Maricopa county, restricting precinct sizes this way would require the county elections department to set up more than 2,000 precincts, and it would be nearly impossible to fully staff and properly run that many locations.
Lastly, early voting has also been highly enjoyed in our state. Early voting is available through mail-in ballots, which most voters in the state take advantage of, but select voting location open early to accomodate early in-person voters. The length of the early voting period tends to vary based on year and location, but these sites all seek to allow folks to take care of voting before election day, at times that work with their schedules. Like mail-in ballots, early ballots cast in person are sealed in envelopes and are later opened and tabulated on election day. Early voting locations are usually dictated by the county reccorders office, according to the needs of each election cycle. This bill would take away the county reccords’ ability to open early voting locations.
The practices targeted in HB2547 are all parts of the on-going effort to make voting as accessable as possible in Arizona. Early voting and the Voting Center model make voting easier and offer multiple accomodations to voters who might otherwise have difficulty getting to the polls on election day. These practices are not linked to increased fraud or election interference, and are instead shown to increase voter satisfaction.
In removing permissions from the county recorders and banning the use of Voting Centers, this bill will make voting in Arizona much harder. While it is pretty clear how these changes will affect voters, the restrictions also add extra hurdles to election departments and county recorders’ offices. Elections are run at the county level for a reason; each community has different needs and faces different difficulties based on population size, geography, and many other factors. County recorders, boards of supervisors, and elections departments make sure that elections fit the needs of their communities, and these restrictions on the state level make that work much harder.
HB2547’s history
HB 2547 was sponsored by Rachel Jones (LD17), and sports several co-sponsors. This bill has been heavily contested, but has managed to make consistence progress through both chambers on relatively thin margins. It was transmitted to the Senate on February 6th, passed the elections committee, and has been caucused. The bill now waits for its final floor vote.
LAMA first introduced this bill at one of our LAMA Liaison Round Table meetings on Voting and Civic Engagement. We also put out an RTS Action Alert related to this bill. Event though close to 500 people have registered in oppostion to HB2547, its progress shows that our RTS stances are not doing enough to depose this policy. Today, we encourage you to contact your senator directly and voice your opposition to HB2547 before it is voted on.
Sample Letter
Contact information for your state Senator’s office can be found here.
You can find positions from Elections Committee members, and other lawmakers, here.
The following letter can be copy and pasted and emailed to your Senator’s office, or you can call their office and leave a message on this legislation. We encourage you to personalize this message to reflect your own thoughts and feelings.
Dear Senator ____,
I am a constituent of yours from District ___, and today I am writing to you in opposition to HB2547. This bill, which is set to recieve its third read in the Senate soon, would ban the use of voting centers, restrict precinct size, and curtail early voting. This bill would make the elections process and voting expereince much harder in Arizona. The use of the Voting Center model is popular among voters and election workers because it makes the process much easier and more accessible without compromising the integrity of our elections.
As a Christian, I consider voting to be an important way to steward our shared society, and for our democracy to work properly, all eligible voters must be able to fairly and equitably access the polls. It is important to me that all elligible Arizonans are able to safely and easily vote, and voting centers are an important way that counties have helped make that happen in our state. The vast majority of people approve of the adoption of in person early voting and voting centers, and these programs have improved voter satisfaction in our state.
HB2547 would also unnessecarily restrict county election officials from making decisions about elections in their community. It is their job to ensure election systems meet the needs of their communities, and this bill hampers their ability to do so.
I hope to see you vote “No” on HB2547 in the coming weeks.
Thank you for your hard work on behalf of Arizonans and for taking the importance our our elections seriously.
[Your Name]
Thank you for your advocacy!
