Should early voters be allowed to give their ballots to someone else to be delivered to the elections office? Coconino County Recorder Patty Hansen doesn’t think so, noting there’s nothing to prevent someone from chucking the ballots into a trash receptacle. “That’s really dangerous,” Hansen said during a discussion last week by the county Board of Supervisors on proposed election law changes before the Legislature. But Supervisor Mandy Metzer, who represents parts of the Navajo Nation where roads are poor and public transportation scarce, had a different take. “It casts a shadow on the efficiency of the permanent early voter system,” she said. She and other county supervisors are somewhat split on a couple of proposed changes to state election law that Hansen supports.
One would prohibit groups from collecting and transporting completed ballots. Another would drop “nonparticipating” voters off early-ballot mailing lists.
The latter proposes to stop mailing early ballots to people who haven’t used them or responded to other election-related mail within two years (including a notice they would be dropped from the early-voting rolls if they didn’t respond).
“You’re trying to remedy a situation where a Navajo can’t read an English ballot with an English notice,” Supervisor Art Babbott said Tuesday, adding that such a measure could “disenfranchise” voters.
“Where do we have this ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ rule?” Babbott asked. “Where else do we have this in our fundamentals of democracy?”
Full Article: Election changes divisive.