Gov. Katie Hobbs on Tuesday vetoed a proposal to speed up election results in Arizona and Republicans are outraged … and, I suspect, secretly delighted.
“VETOED,” the Arizona Republican Party proclaimed. “@GovernorHobbs could have done the right thing for Arizona by signing the bill to give our state same-day results. Instead, she showed yet again that she is nothing more than a radical partisan puppet masquerading as a governor. Republicans will remember this action, Governor …”
“The governor’s veto is a huge mistake,” Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, echoed. “This was a missed opportunity to increase voter confidence and reduce frustration on election night.”
GOP slipped a nonstarter into a good bill
It was also an opportunity for Republicans to slip a political mickey into the bill — one that would have forced the vast majority of Arizona voters to jump through a new hoop to get an early ballot.
“This legislation effectively ends the Active Early Voting List, something that has nothing to do with faster election results, but disenfranchises voters by adding additional steps for the hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters who prefer to vote by mail,” Hobbs wrote in her veto message.
Make that millions of Arizona voters.
It’s a disappointing end to a bill that started so well — at least, for those who prefer to know who won the election before we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner. (OK, a bit of an exaggeration but only a little bit.)
Initial version aimed to speed election results
Arizona has always taken a long time to count votes, but we’ve only noticed in recent years as races have tightened.
The problem is the hundreds of thousands of voters who drop off their early ballots on Election Day — ballots that can’t even begin to be processed until the day after the election.
Thus came Petersen’s proposal to cut off early ballot drop-offs on the Friday before the election. Anyone voting after that would have to show ID, allowing their ballots to be tabulated on the spot.
Hobbs and her fellow Democrats, whose voters disproportionately drop off their early ballots on Election Day, immediately labeled it a “voter suppression bill.”
Yeah, I didn’t buy it either.
Arizona early ballots should be turned in early
If you want to vote early, then vote … early. You have most of a month to get it done.
If you don’t want to vote early, you can always do it the old-fashioned way — by showing ID and voting on Election Day.
Petersen’s bill made sense here in a swing state that was the last to be called in the 2024 presidential election.
Opinion: Don’t blame late early ballots for slow election results
But then came House Republicans, loading down Petersen’s proposal with a plan to make it more difficult to get an early ballot.
A plan, by the way, that has absolutely nothing to do with speeding up election results.
Republicans wanted to quietly hobble early voting
But the conspiracy crowd has considered the state’s decades-old early ballot program to be a hotbed of fraud ever since their candidates started losing a few years ago. They know they can’t eliminate early voting, given its popularity.
So, instead, they hoped to quietly hobble it.
Under the bill sent to Hobbs, voters in Maricopa and Pima counties would have to request an early ballot every election cycle, confirming their address. Voters in smaller counties would have to request an early ballot every four years.
No longer could Arizonans who regularly vote automatically get a ballot in the mail.
Hobbs’ veto is the first of the year, but it won’t be the last.
Hobbs was never going to stand for that
In her veto message, she laid out several options she was willing to consider in return for an early ballot cutoff, including “same-day voter registration, cross-county portability of voter registration, and expanded assistance for eligible voters to return their ballots in a timely manner.”
“A negotiated bill that included some of these provisions would have shown Arizonans that it is possible to both speed up counting and expand voter access,” she wrote in her veto message.
Same-day voter registration? Yeah, no. Republicans were never going there.
And Hobbs was never going to require early voters to vote early — never mind the popularity of the idea.
The campaign to punish the governor has begun
Republicans hold the upper hand here. They can bypass Hobbs and send their election proposal directly to the 2026 ballot, just as she stands for reelection.
In fact, they’ll be delighted to do so.
“Katie Hobbs is failing to sign even the most common sense bills being placed on her desk,” a spokesman for the Republican Governors Association said. “It’s pathetic.”
“HB2703 was essential to ensure that AZ’s elections results are reported in a secure, accurate & TIMELY manner … ,” Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap groused on social media. “Katie Hobbs doesn’t care that Arizonans want election results ON election night. This was a shortsighted, partisan veto.”
Already the campaign has begun.
Reach Roberts at [email protected]. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz, on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz and on BlueSky at @laurieroberts.bsky.social.
Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Katie Hobbs veto of election results bill makes GOP happy | Opinion
