A bill that would return voting to precincts instead of at large vote centers passed the State House of Representatives along party lines on Tuesday, 32-26. If HCR 2002, sponsored by Representative Rachel Jones (R-Tucson), passes the State Senate, it will be sent to the ballot since it is a House Concurrent Resolution, bypassing any likely veto by Governor Katie Hobbs. The bill would establish precincts with no larger than one thousand registered voters, and states that county supervisors may not revert back to vote centers.
Republicans who support the bill say it’s necessary due to the botched 2022 election, where ballot on demand printers failed to print the proper sized ballots, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters. With precinct level voting, there is no need for those printers, since ballots don’t need to be customized for each person regardless of where they vote within the county, they are printed in advance specific to each precinct.
Jones proposed a similar bill last year, which failed to pass out of the State Senate. However, Jones said during a hearing of the House Federalism, Military Affairs and Elections Committee in January discussing the bill that the Republican senator who voted with the Democrats to oppose it, Ken Bennett, is no longer in the state legislature, having been defeated in the primary by conservative Representative Mark Finchem (R-Prescott).
Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap testified in favor of the bill at the January hearing. He said proponents of the vote centers claimed that it would make voting easier, since people wouldn’t have to drive as far. “For the most part it has done the opposite,” he said, stating that it has made elections easier for election officials but not for voters. “It was presented a certain way to the voters, in a way that I actually think is more appealing to the people who have to run elections than to necessarily the voters.”
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