PHOENIX — Saying they’re trying to protect the integrity of elections, Republican lawmakers voted Wednesday to keep groups that may have special interests from picking up early ballots and taking them to the polls, though politicians would be exempt.
More than eight out of every 10 Arizonans votes with an early ballot. And current law allows any individual to go to anyone’s home, pick up that ballot and promise to drop it off.
But state Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, said that creates a huge opportunity for fraud.
Shooter said he’s heard about groups that collect large numbers of ballots, put them in a microwave with a bowl of water, steam them open and then submit only the ballots that back their favored candidates.
But he conceded under questioning from House Minority Leader Eric Meyer, D-Paradise Valley, that such occurrences are unverified. And Shooter said while he reported what he heard, no one was ever charged because no one was willing to testify.
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“But if it’s happening, why wouldn’t you want to stop it?” Shooter asked.
Eric Spencer, the state’s elections director, also provided no specific cases of fraud. But he told members of the House Appropriations Committee that his boss, Secretary of State Michele Reagan, believes it is necessary to make felons out of those engaged in “ballot harvesting.”
“Does it really take a scandal, does it really take a crime for us to react?” he asked, saying the failure of lawmakers to approve SB 1339 would amount to “legislative malpractice.”
The measure was approved by the Republican-controlled committee on a 9-5 party-line vote and now goes to the full House.
Central to the debate is the question of how hard it is for people to cast those early ballots.
Voters can get an early ballot before every election, fill it out and drop it in the mail.
The law also allows outside groups to pick up unmailed ballots and drop them off at polling places.
“It really is a chain-of custody-matter,” Shooter said.
“If you give your ballot to someone else, something else can happen,” he continued. He said labor unions in particular have an interest in affecting the outcome of elections.
The legislation would make it a felony, with a presumptive sentence of a year in state prison, for any individual to pick up more than two early ballots from anyone else.
There are exceptions for family members, people living in the same home and caregivers, including those who work in a nursing home where someone lives. And the measure also allows candidates and their spouses to collect as many ballots as they want.
Shooter acknowledged after Wednesday’s hearing that candidates would have as much interest in steaming open ballot envelopes as any other special interest and discarding votes they don’t like.
“I can’t argue with that logic,” he told Capitol Media Services. But Shooter said the exception exists for candidates because “there’s a long-standing tradition for candidates to be able to do that.”
Anyway, Shooter said, the restrictions on everyone else being able to collect ballots do not create a real hardship for voters. He said they can simply put them in the mail.
Meyer, however, said that only works if the ballot is mailed early enough to get to county offices by Election Day. He said voters often wait until the last minute to learn everything they can about candidates.
Jennifer Loredo, lobbyist for the Arizona Education Association, had a more concrete example.
She said teachers are concerned about how the Legislature has financially shorted public schools. The result, Loredo said, is schools are more dependent on bond issues and overrides, elections that in the days leading to the election can be close.
“What a lot of our teachers and our school employees do is they get voter lists and they go and they walk their neighborhoods,” she said. “They talk to parents of children they have taught and they get those people to fill out their ballot and return it to them, someone that they trust, so that person can go and turn it in to the elections office.”
But Rep. Michelle Ugenti, R-Scottsdale, said nothing in the legislation prevents those teachers from going door to door and urging people to support the bond issue or override. All it does, Ugenti said, is block them from picking up the ballots.
Rep. Rick Gray, R-Sun City, said the legislation does amount to “a little bit of inconvenience.” But he said that is outweighed by protecting the integrity of the election process.
Spencer said no one who brings ballots to a polling place would be asked for identification or proof of being a family member or caregiver. And Spencer said that, no matter what, every ballot would be counted.
Follow Howard Fischer on Twitter at @azcapmedia.
