Critics assail reform plans for elections

Election 2012 -- with its surge of Latino voters, increase in impossible-to-track campaign donations, and hotly fought ballot measures -- is reverberating at the Legislature in a flurry of bills that seek to remedy the problems exposed by last fall's contests.

THE BILLS

Bills proposed to address the problems that occurred during the November general election would do the following:

Pare down early-voting lists.

Make it more difficult to deliver other people's ballots to polling places.

Make it more difficult to place citizen initiatives on the ballot.

But many of the bills, including three approved in the Senate last week, could backfire. County elections officials promoted much of the legislation in the name of trying to avoid a repeat of last fall's issues, when a flurry of provisional ballots caused final results to be delayed for more than a week. Many voters were forced to file provisional ballots because their names appeared on early-voting lists.

But new restrictions could alienate voters and lead to further confusion, if not lawsuits, critics argue.

One bill would pare down early-voting lists; another would make it more difficult to deliver other people's ballots to polling places; and other bills would make it more difficult to place citizen initiatives on the ballot.

The loudest complaints have come from Arizona's Latinos, who led aggressive voter-registration drives that added thousands of new voters to the rolls. Those voters tend to cast their ballots overwhelmingly for Democrats.

Others have criticized the double standard that would be created for petition-signature requirements: strict compliance for citizen-driven initiatives, but a looser standard for candidates.

"We should be working on encouraging folks to participate in our elections, not taking that right away," said Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, who has led the charge against bills that would tighten rules for Arizona's popular early-ballot program.

Sam Wercinski, executive director of the Arizona Advocacy Network, said the bills are not so much a reaction to the 2012 election as to the protests sparked by the two-week wait for results.

"We've always had large numbers of provisionals," said Wercinski, whose group lobbies for voting access. "I think politicians saw how powerful the permanent early-voting list and vote-by-mail are for new voters, and particularly Latino voters, and that's why we have all these bills."

Even elections officials, who would have to enforce whatever changes the Legislature approves, say the best solution to confusion over early voting is increased voter education. However, there is no money in the current bills to provide for greater voter outreach.

Lee Rowland, an attorney at the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, said Arizona is not alone in reacting to last fall's elections with a stream of proposed changes.

There was an "unprecedented level of restriction" in the 2012 election, she said, such as the refusal of Florida Gov. Rick Scott to extend early-voting hours to deal with long lines and confusion in Pennsylvania over a new voter-identification law.

"It's really important that the focus be on actual problems, not manufactured problems," Rowland said. "What we really shouldn't see is a return to some of the restrictive practices that happened before the election."

To hear the backers of some of the key bills at the Capitol, Arizona's laws weren't restrictive enough. From trying to rein in who can return a voter's ballot to how much scrutiny should be given to voter signatures on petitions, the bills seek to tighten the rules.

Early-vote troubles

Many of those provisional ballots that caused problems in last fall's election came from voters who had signed up on the permanent early-voting list and received a ballot in the mail. But on Election Day, for any number of reasons, people who received an early ballot walked into a polling place and either dropped it off or asked for a ballot. Those who got a new ballot had to vote provisionally so elections workers could verify that they had not voted twice. That process added time to the tabulation process.

It's not a phenomenon unique to 2012: Ever since Arizona created the early-voting list, late-arriving "early" ballots have slowed elections returns.

Senate Bill 1261 would thin out the permanent early-voting list by automatically removing any voter who does not vote by mail for two consecutive election cycles.

The clock would start ticking with the 2010 election, meaning voters who didn't cast an early ballot in 2010 and 2012 would be purged. They could still vote, but would have to do it the old-fashioned way by going to the polls.

The Arizona Voters Coalition doesn't like the automatic nature of the purge. Rather, this collection of civic groups said, the state should let voters opt out of the list. Coalition members include the League of Women Voters of Arizona, the Inter-Tribal Council and Mi Familia Vota.

The group also objected to the bill's original penalty of imposing a Class 5 felony, punishable by up to 11/2 years in prison, on anyone who knowingly altered a voter-registration form without consent of that voter. Sen. Michele Reagan, R-Scottsdale and the sponsor of SB 1261, reduced the penalty to a Class 6 felony, which often is bargained down to a misdemeanor.

The Senate approved the amended bill last week on a party-line 16-12 vote, with Democrats opposed. It's now in the House.

The state Democratic Party assailed Reagan over the bill, as well as two others approved by the Senate, sending out a news release headlined "Help stop voter suppression in Arizona" and charging that the bills were part of her strategy to nail down the GOP nomination for secretary of state in 2014.

Reagan, who's been clear about her interest in the top elections post, said the bills come with the backing of county elections officials, both Democrats and Republicans. They resulted from study sessions last year that involved an array of people involved in the elections process who were trying to plug the holes plaguing the system.

However, she never invited the Latino organizing groups that mobilized thousands of new voters. They held a news conference, testified at the Elections Committee hearings Reagan chairs and, just last week, staged a silent protest that led to their ejection from a Senate hearing room. About a dozen young people held up small signs claiming Reagan was anti-Latino.

These grass-roots groups are particularly upset with another Reagan bill that would limit who can carry a voter's ballot into a polling place. It carries a Class 6 felony penalty. Currently, anyone, or any group, can take in ballots, a practice that Reagan last month said she found appalling.

SB 1003 would require anyone who delivers a ballot on behalf of a voter to sign a statement that they have the voter's permission to do so. It's a concession to critics of the original bill, which would have limited the practice to immediate family members or roommates.

Reagan questions whether protesters realize she's amended the bill to allow the voter to designate anyone they want to deliver the ballot. And she has set up meetings to discuss concerns with these groups, saying they had never asked before they launched their protests.

SB 1003 is a response to the practice of grass-roots groups that signed up thousands of Latino voters and then collected their ballots for delivery to the polls.

"A lot of people trust us more than the U.S. mail to take in their ballots," said Brendan Walsh, who worked on voter registration and turnout with Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy.

SB 1003 also passed the Senate on the same 16-12 party-line vote. Sen. Jack Jackson Jr., who represents the Navajo and Hopi tribal areas, said SB 1003 could have a "devastating" impact.

"Republicans want to make a felon out of someone helping their neighbors to vote, but many members of our tribal communities live in remote areas and depend on help to deliver their early ballots," Jackson, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Initiative reform

Last summer saw courtroom battles over two of Arizona's most contentious ballot initiatives: to dedicate a permanent sales-tax increase to education and to create an open-primary system. Both withstood their challenges but lost at the polls.

But the legal battles could have turned out differently if SB 1264, also sponsored by Reagan, had been in place. The Senate approved the bill 16-12.

Among the two dozen changes the bill proposes is one that would make "strict compliance" the standard for voter signatures on initiative petitions.

In the court challenge to the open-primary system, the judge relied on a "substantial compliance" standard that allowed certain voter signatures to be counted, although opponents argued they should be tossed.

Chris Herstam, an attorney and former state lawmaker, questioned why the Legislature is creating a tougher standard for voter-initiated measures while not imposing it on their own candidate campaigns.

"An obvious double standard exists by giving candidates the benefit of the doubt, but not citizens who wish to utilize their constitutional rights," said Herstam, who supported the open-primary system.

This provision of SB 1264 would "neuter" the 101-year-old citizen-initiative process, he said.

Jim Drake, staff attorney for the secretary of state, said the rules for candidate petitions are in a different statute and should be looked at separately.

Another provision of the bill would clarify that only a copy of a citizen initiative that is time- and date-stamped by the Secretary of State's Office would qualify as the official version.

Backers of the education sales tax relied on a version of their measure that had been submitted electronically when they circulated petition sheets. The courts upheld the education supporters, and the measure qualified for the ballot over the objection of opponents.

However, the ensuing campaigns on the education sales tax and the open primary were defeated largely because of an infusion of money from non-profit corporations that are not required to disclose their donors.

Reagan said she couldn't find a way to force those groups to disclose their donors, and the Senate last week defeated a Democratic amendment that was an attempt to put the disclosure burden on the recipient of the outside contributions.

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