System makes it easier to vote in person, anywhere
Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes created a bit of a stir last month with his extraordinary — and exaggerated, it turned out — research of voters who may have been denied their rights for failing to follow the letter of the law on filling out their registration forms.
His quieter, more meaningful actions have been on modernizing voting itself.
Fontes and his office are pushing toward a system that would simplify how people vote and expand the period in which they could.
And it’s not inconsequential given that his predecessor was drummed out of office following the long lines and tone-deaf explanations that marked last year’s presidential primary election.
The “all-mail” voting system, a tad of a misnomer, would advance elections essentially in two ways: Make it easier to vote in person, and provide more days to cast a ballot.
Voters could go to any “ballot centers” on or before Election Day, check in, print out their ballot and cast a vote. Presently, voters on Election Day must show up to their assigned polling precinct.
The number of centers would start small and grow — beginning 27 days before an election with a few sites then, 10 days prior to Election Day, expanding with about a dozen “megacenters” that also offer extended, evening hours.
Five days out, the numbers would swell. For a countywide election, polling sites would balloon to more than 100, and they would be open from the Friday before an election through Election Day, including the weekend. Ballots could be dropped off anytime. Currently, those with an early ballot must turn it in by 5 p.m. the Friday before the election.
(For an all-mail election, in-person voting is considered “replacement balloting,” in part because voters could replace a ballot sent to them if not received or if marked in error or for some other reason — say, a candidate body-slams a reporter the day before the election.)
Fontes and county Elections Director Reynaldo “Rey” Valenzuela see other benefits with the all-mail system. The recorder told Republic reporter Rebekah Sanders in late March that it would save the county tens of millions of dollars over the next several years, and streamline two election systems — into one.
It’d also speed up the tabulation of results, they say.
Ironically, the ballot-on-demand system would modernize voting for a minority of the electorate. Valenzuela notes that 1.6 of the 2.2 million registered voters in Maricopa County are on the “Permanent Early Voting List,” and early ballots now account for an overwhelming majority of the votes cast — 82 percent and 87 percent in last year’s general and presidential primary elections.
A first run of the system will take place with largely school-district elections this November. Fontes eyes using that success to scale up the use for general elections in 2018, although a more realistic goal seems 2020.
One challenge to transitioning to the new system will surely be public education — the “all mail” or “vote by mail” label will lead some voters to mistakenly believe they cannot vote in person on Election Day.
Another would be replacing the 700plus polling sites with a reduced number of ballot centers. Some outcries of disenfranchisement and less access to a voting booth would not be unexpected.
The biggest obstacle may well lie with Arizona legislators, who must approve changes to state statues to permit the extra days of in-person voting, including the weekend and day before Election Day.
There’s been talk and failed efforts by GOP lawmakers, Sanders reported, to dilute Fontes’ power, including legislation that’d require a review of all local intergovernment agreements, such as one that the county Board of Supervisors signed in 1955 to combine the Elections Department and Recorder’s Office in a quest for efficiency.
I’d not be surprised to hear concerns of compromised voting integrity or fraud or some such. Fontes says the system is sound — voters who print out their ballots, using their driver’s license or voter ID that has a bar code, will be issued an affidavit envelope that must be signed and whose signature will be verified against what’s on file.
Bare-knuckle politics may await Fontes, but voting modernization can’t be stalled for long.