Civic Register
| 5.18.21

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey Signs Early Mail Voting Bill Into Law - What Does It Do?

Do you support or oppose Arizona’s early mail voting bill?

What’s the story?

“This bill is simple ― it’s all about election integrity. If an individual is signed up to automatically be mailed an early ballot and then stops voting entirely for a full four years their county recorder will ask them if they still want to automatically be mailed a ballot. If they respond, they’ll continue receiving one. If they don’t respond, here’s what happens: They will remain a registered voter, they can still request an early ballot, and they can also show up at the polls in-person on Election Day.” 
“This bill would end Arizona’s Permanent Early Voting List, a fixture of Arizona’s elections for over a decade. While some would try to portray this bill as cleaning up the voter rolls, it does no such thing. In fact, Arizona already has a process to ensure that voter registrations are current, a process that prevents truly inactive voters from receiving a ballot in the mail. Our current process works… and the changes proposed in this bill aren’t just unnecessary ― they’re detrimental to voters.”
  • Here’s a look at what’s in the new law and how it compares to previous policy in Arizona:

What does the new Arizona election law do?

  • The Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL) is renamed the Active Early Voting List (AEVL) under the new law. The PEVL was first established in 2007, and Arizona has had early voting (previously known in the state as “absentee voting”) since 1993.
  • If a voter who is currently on the AEVL actively votes by mail, they will continue to receive early ballots for elections in their jurisdiction.
  • If a voter on the AEVL fails to return at least one early ballot by mail over a four year period ― including two consecutive primary and general elections, and any preceding municipal elections (which excludes those for special taxing districts) ― they will be sent a notice by their county recorder asking if they still want to receive an early ballot in future elections.
  • The county recorder will be required to send such notices by mail on January 15th of each odd-number year to voters on the AEVL who didn’t vote an early ballot for the two previous election cycles as described above. If the county recorder has the voter’s email address and/or telephone number, they can also contact the voter by email, call, or text message. 
  • Notices will inform the voter that if they wish to remain on the AEVL, they must confirm in writing that they want to remain on the AEVL and return the completed notice to the county recorder or other official in charge of elections within 90 days of it being sent to the voter.
  • No provisions in the new law alter the registration status of a voter who is removed from the AEVL, so if they don’t respond to the notice about their status on the AEVL and are removed from it they can still an early ballot at a later date prior to an election or vote in-person.
  • The new law doesn’t apply retroactively to past elections, so voters who are on the AEVL (previously known as the PEVL) but don’t use their early ballot will remain on the list for the next two election cycles with statewide general elections. That means the first notices to voters on the AEVL who didn’t vote early in the prior two election cycles won’t be sent until 2025.


— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: Ducey: Gage Skidmore via Flickr / Creative Commons | iStock.com / Darylann Elmi)

  • 1,605
    Sandra
    07/08/2021

    Do you remember the outcry by Republicans because, the final count for President of the United States would take several days due to the fact, that they did not start to count the mail in votes until election day (which made NO sense.....why not count them as they came in and then add them to the total of poll voting on election day.....makes sense to me!) so, we would not know on election night who our new president would be......Anyway, ......Cyber Ninjas , a fly-by-night operation was given the job of a recount in Maricopa (?) county in Arizona....they began work April 23rd and said they would be finished in a MONTH.....WHY so long?.....Who knows, but when a company has absolutely NO experience in this kind of thing, it's a "learn as you do" experience, especially when you are looking for bamboo in the paper of the ballots and secret watermarks....OOOOOOH!........These clowns now have pushed their "finish" date to July 26....more than 2 months past the original date and that's just an estimate.....and not only are the POT not complaining about this, they want to have similar counts in several other states....the most recent to jump on board with this lunacy is Pennsylvania who wants to start with a THREE county count but , I am sure in NO areas where the Rep. actually won.....the madness not only continues.....it is growing.

  • 21
    Adalberto
    06/12/2021

    Why Change A law that has worked for a long Time Leave it along Voters haven’t complain In Az Duecy don’t try to make it Rain upwards Allow it to rain Downwards Think For a change keep it Normal

  • 2,741
    George
    05/28/2021

    Suppression!

  • 35
    Stephen
    05/28/2021

    There’s nothing to fix here. “Reform” outrage is a red herring based on nothing. Pathetic.

  • 142
    Catherine
    05/24/2021

    Republicans got a wake-up call when record numbers of voters turned out to get rid of Trump. I think their fear is that they are next and are taking pre-emptive action to limit their ability to vote next time.

  • 458
    Linda
    05/24/2021

    Let's take a short walk down memory lane. When was the last time a Republican won the Presidency with actual popular votes from actual people? Of course it is necessary to suppress the votes if they want to win. It is sick and demented to think that fraud that didn't occur is being prevented. Talk about paranoid wack jobs gone wild.

  • 1,582
    Steve
    05/23/2021

    The Republicans don’t want the working class and poor people voting! The want to remain in power to take advantage of the working class to improve the lives of the wealthy! They claim to support law enforcement but have the passed any laws to take care of an officer 👮‍♀️ hurt or killed in the line of duty? Time and time again I see fund raisers to help families of injured officers! Republicans find your moral backbone and do the right thing!

  • 29
    Gabriel
    05/22/2021

    Perhaps when Real Id laws are established. The mail is not secure when everything before hand is an unknown. Show ID and get a ballot. Every state that has mail in established such as Oregon and Colorado has 1 mailer that goes out personally attached to individual Identification.. not so this last election in most mail in states

  • 24
    Sun-hae
    05/22/2021

    Arizona governor does not know what is democracy. so doing wrong thing which shows he is not working for we the people. expel him at once to stop not to hold public service title. thank you. sincerely sun hae kim

  • 430
    Robert
    05/22/2021

    Strongly oppose, Ducey does not care about fair elections!

  • 2,427
    Glowurm
    05/21/2021

    Short, but sweet, Surender! ❤️😊❤️

  • 7,875
    DaveS
    05/21/2021

    Get over it, Trump lost?

  • 3,563
    Surender
    05/21/2021

    ‘Death by a thousand cuts’ … democracy as we knew it

  • 1,271
    justiceforamerica
    05/21/2021

    Country will not stand for stolen elections. Treason charges will be applied

  • 124
    Jj
    05/21/2021

    I have been voting by mail in Arizona since the 1990s and have worked the polls as well. Its not broken unless this new law goes into effect. I seem to recall a similar bill years back that got receded because it proved useless. this bill looks like a form of gerrymandering from a different angle. Just saying!

  • 75
    Peter
    05/21/2021

    Election Integrity is important.

  • 398
    Bicycler
    05/20/2021

    @Freethinker is anything but. He automatically accuses Democrats of cheating at elections when we have had some of the most accurate elections as declared by William Barr of tRump's Justice Department and Chris Krebs who was in charge of election integrity. We had a voting rights bill passed in 1964 because many states made it almost impossible for black people to vote even though they had been guaranteed the right to do so. Having the Supreme Court declare that it was no longer needed gave states open license to do the same things they did way back when to make it more difficult for people of color, the elderly, person's with disabilities, etc. the right to vote in elections without extreme difficulty. It has nothing to do with voter integrity. It has everything to do with legislatures wanting to pick their voters instead of voters picking their legislatures. Even now voting machines are not hooked to the internet, foreign governments cannot get in to hack the machines and states do routine audits of the paper ballots in many cases prior to certifying the results. There is an all too easy solution which worked for years; I register to vote I show up to vote and my signature is compared to my voter registration signature and I am trusted to vote in an election. The reason they put in all of these roadblocks is because they work to discourage people who cannot get the day off to vote and rely on the income they would lose. They intentionally close ballot locations so that it forces 11-12 hour lines and now they insist that no one can bring water or food to the people standing in those long lines. Guess where these long lines are? Certainly not in my Lilly White neighborhood. I could get in and out in less than a half hour during a presidential election though I now vote by mail because I cannot stand in lines because of my spinal cord injury. In the black section of the state they have record long lines which make it difficult to vote. There is no way you can convince me that the souls to the polls is about voter integrity. The same as requiring notary republics to sign off on your ability to vote? My being a natural born American gives me the nation wide ability to vote in elections and if I choose not to vote for a couple of years as there is nothing down ballot I wish to vote on there is no reason to purge me from the voter rolls. Because states cannot be trusted to do anything but Gerrymander their way into winning, suppressing the votes by purging voter rolls, eliminating ballot boxes in large areas meaning that someone might have to drive over 100 miles just to put their mail in ballot in a drop box, voter intimidation, bypassing election officials and placing the party in charge of their own elections which is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house, and all of the other tactics they are doing to insure they win at all costs. This is proof that we absolutely need a new voting rights bill. I really don't care how states want to handle their own statewide elections but, if they wish to participate in Federal elections and the Presidential election then we need a uniform voting rights bill which insures that they are all done uniformly and with no ability to make it unfair for one voter versus another. Right now the way it stands is that if Republicans win it is fair and spot on and if Democrats win they somehow cheated. I call bullshit what it is! Trump's problem was that he was too stupid to not tell everyone how he was going to cheat ahead of time. He told everyone that mail in voting was problematic. He messed with the postal service. He assured everyone that if he didn't win it was because the election was rigged. The reality was he wasn't that popular to begin with, he lost a lot of trust in his handling of the pandemic, his strong economy and job gains which he inherited he tanked because of how he didn't handle the pandemic and he alienated everyone except his staunch supporters. When you punch enough people in the nose they came out in record numbers and stood in those long lines to make sure that they could vote. Biden won with a record popular vote amount over tRump but his electoral college win was as narrow as tRump's was in 2016.

  • 41.9k
    jimK
    05/19/2021

    If you were on the PEVL, you will get moved to the AEVL, if you have used PEVL once over the last four years, but only if the PEVL was used for at least 2 combined primary or final votes, and these provisions will transfer from the PEVL to the AEVL if you qualify or answer a message from the county recorder sent on odd numbered years on a specified date. Well, that should help people registered and enabled to maintain their voter registration and to easily cast their vote! Of course they may have to hire a CPA or lawyer just to be sure to get their ballot. If it ain’t broke why fix it unless the point is to put the ‘fix’ in to change the results - in this case, by making it harder for people have their vote be submitted. Never trust a Republican offering to make things better without looking closely at ‘better’ for what and ‘better’ for who.

  • 356
    Edward
    05/20/2021

    This is arbitrary and smack's of dictatorship.

  • 1,387
    Steve
    05/20/2021

    All Reublican efforts to restrict voters are unconstitutional.