Photo and illustration by Jim Small | Arizona Mirror
House Republicans want to return Arizona to a “pre-1991” voting system in which the vast majority of voters must cast their ballot in person on Election Day.
Arizona was among a handful of states that largely pioneered voting by mail, and it is incredibly popular: Almost 90% of ballots in 2020 were mail-in ballots, and around 75% of voters were signed up to receive early ballots in 2022.
The move to no-excuses early voting, in which any voter can request an early ballot and then cast it by mail, was ushered into existence in 1991 by Arizona Republicans. The GOP long benefited from early voting here until then-President Donald Trump and his supporters began spreading misinformation about vote-by-mail fraud after he lost the 2020 presidential election.
Since then, Republicans like Rep. Rachel Jones, R-Tucson, who says that her constituents are asking for the system to be scrapped, have tried to eliminate early voting.
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