PHOENIX — A legal dispute was decided by the Arizona Supreme Court this weekend over whether voters were being denied the right to fix their signatures on ballots.
Lost in the debate was that the shorter time of two fewer days for affected voters to "cure" their ballots — upheld by the state's high court — is just a small part of a much larger measure to tighten up the election schedule, approved by state lawmakers earlier this year. Legislators from both parties, each thinking their presidential candidate would win, wanted to ensure that all vote tallying and legal fights were done in time so that Arizona's 11 electoral votes would count.
Behind those changes was an effort by Congress to avoid a repeat of what happened four years ago when there was an attempt to have Donald Trump declared the winner despite the actual vote.
That legislation, approved in February by the GOP-led Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, also:
• Moved up the date of the state primary election to late July;
• Shortened the time counties have before they must canvass the vote;
• Moved up the deadline for the statewide canvass;
• Allowed recounts to start before the full statewide canvass.
All those changes were made to ensure Arizona would have a say in this year's presidential race.
The chain of events started in 2022 when Congress amended the Electoral Count Act. That 1887 law sets up the procedures under which Congress tallies the electoral votes from each state to determine who was elected president.
Weaknesses in that law came under scrutiny after the 2020 election when competing slates of electors claimed they were the rightful picks, regardless of each state's popular vote.
That happened in Arizona when Republicans submitted their own slate of fake electors for Trump in a scheme to claim the state's 11 electoral votes despite the fact Joe Biden won the popular vote here. Those electors and allies who helped launch the plan have since been indicted on state charges of forgery and conspiracy. Those who have not yet made deals with prosecutors are set to go on trial next year.
Congress clarified the federal law to spell out it is the governor, and only the governor, who sends the slate of electors. It also provides for expedited judicial review.
Gone is a provision that allowed a single senator and a single representative to object to a state's electoral votes. Now it takes at least one fifth of the U.S. House and Senate to raise objections.
Perhaps most significantly, the 2020 law also clarifies that the vice president's role in the process is only administrative, without the power to resolve disputes over electors. That was in direct response to Trump trying to get his vice president, Mike Pence, to disregard the 2020 electoral tally.
All that had fallout for Arizona.
The federal law now provides a hard-and-fast deadline for states to get the formal results to Congress to have them considered.
This year it falls on Dec. 11.
The federal law also eliminates a provision that used to give states a bit more time to conduct their post-election activities, such as recounts. Now, there is no margin for error: Votes not finalized and transmitted by Dec. 11 simply might not be counted when the Electoral College is scheduled to meet six days later.
That is not a problem for Arizona if there are no disputes.
But a 2022 state law now requires an automatic recount if the margin of difference between the candidates is at least 0.5%, up from 0.1%. And given the results of the 2020 presidential race where Biden defeated Trump in Arizona by just 10,457 votes — about 0.3% — lawmakers feared there could be a repeat situation this year.
That, however, ran into another provision of prior Arizona law saying a recount could not begin until after the statewide canvass, which must follow each county's canvass — a calendar that election officials said could extend beyond Dec. 11.
Counties, which used to have until the end of the month, now must complete their formal canvass by Nov. 21. The official statewide canvass is four days later.
To tighten things up further, the law also allows a judge to order a recount once counties have completed their canvass. Prior to this year, that couldn't happen until after the statewide canvass.
The reason that law also moved up the primary election date to July was because with an increased chance of recounts, lawmakers wanted to be sure there were final decisions in time to prepare, send and receive general election ballots from overseas voters.
Losing two days from the time voters had to cure their ballots was part of the same state law approved in February, as lawmakers cobbled together a few days here and there to tighten up the whole election schedule. That's the change that led the Arizona chapters of the ACLU and the League of United Latin American Citizens to mount a court challenge over the weekend, which the state's high court rejected.
The Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix.
