This week got off to a great start. On Monday, the Arizona House passed HB2492, a bill that would safeguard our voter rolls by ensuring that only qualified, U.S. citizens are registered to vote, able to vote in Presidential elections, and eligible to vote by mail.
But the good news didn’t stop there.
The House also passed SCR1012, known as the Arizonans for Voter ID Act. And with the Senate already passing this ballot referral late last week, that means the people of Arizona will now get to decide on universal voter ID in November.
This is an important step to ensure the integrity of our elections. “Easy to vote and hard to cheat” should be the benchmark for every election we have. And in Arizona, voters certainly have many ways to exercise their vote, including day-of-polls, early voting, and mail-in voting.
But the security of our elections has been a different story—as the audit report showed this past September. Universal voter ID here in Arizona would help solve this critical issue. If passed by the voters in this November’s election, this initiative would:
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- Improve existing in-person voter ID requirements.
- Establish voter ID for mail-in ballots.
- Deter ballot harvesting by enhancing voter ID requirements for in-person ballot drop off.
- Provide a free voter ID option to lawfully registered Arizona voters who need it for voting.
This is a common-sense approach to election integrity that’s being increasingly implemented around the country. And it ensures that no matter when you vote, where you vote, or how you vote, identification will be required.
As you might expect, some Democrat leaders are having a meltdown, most especially Sen. Martín Quezada (D-LD29), who couldn’t help but tweet that not everyone has access to an ID. Apparently, Sen. Quezada didn’t read the bill because, as we mentioned above, this initiative gives every citizen access to a free voter ID.
But we do have to ask. If Sen. Quezada and other Democrats are so concerned about this, why don’t they also have a problem with other daily activities that require basic identification? The people of Arizona already have to provide ID for things like purchasing alcohol or cigarettes, obtaining a driver’s license, boarding a commercial flight, donating blood, opening a bank account, purchasing a firearm, receiving unemployment benefits, obtaining auto insurance, purchasing or renting a home, and more.
Isn’t the security of our elections equally—if not more important—than each of these?
Perhaps what’s most eye-opening is that Democrat leaders pushing back against universal voter ID are actually pushing back against their very own people.
Statewide polling from April of last year shows that an overwhelming majority of Arizona voters support voter ID requirements, including every race and ethnicity. And even a large majority of Democrats, 69%, support the idea of requiring all voters to provide ID prior to voting.
Now the people of Arizona will get a chance to decide once and for all this November. And if they want to protect the ballot of every qualified Arizona voter, they should choose to make universal voter ID a reality in our state.
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