Arizona mail-in voting: Judge denies GOP block request
Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen blocked an try to ban most mail-in ballots throughout the 2022 election.
PHOENIX — An Arizona choose on Monday declined a request by the state Republican Party to block most mail ballots for the 2022 election, preserving the voting methodology utilized by the overwhelming majority of voters.
Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen dominated that nothing within the Arizona Constitution prohibits the Legislature from permitting residents to vote by mail.
The case is the newest piece of a multi-pronged effort by the Arizona Republican Party and its firebrand chair, Kelli Ward, to roll again a system of no-excuse absentee voting that the GOP-controlled Legislature has constructed since 1991.
They’ve pushed to require almost everybody to cast a poll in particular person on Election Day as former President Donald Trump repeats the lie that he lost the 2020 election due to fraud linked to mail ballots in Arizona and different battleground states.
Lawyers for state and county election officers in addition to the Arizona Democratic Party mentioned the vote-by-mail legal guidelines have loads of secrecy safeguards built-in. The choose, appointed by former Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, agreed.
“The laws are far from perfect and nobody anticipated thirty years ago that approximately 90 percent of Arizona voters would vote by mail-in ballot during a pandemic, but these laws are NOT in violation of the Arizona Constitution,” Judge Jantzen wrote.
Arizona is among the many states with the best ranges of mail voting, a system that has grown overwhelmingly well-liked with voters from each events in addition to independents.
Striking down these legal guidelines would have had main implications for the 2022 election in Arizona, which incorporates one of many handful of races that can decide which get together controls the U.S. Senate.
Ward and the state GOP initially filed their lawsuit straight with the Arizona Supreme Court earlier this year, a extremely uncommon step, however the justices mentioned it ought to undergo a trial courtroom first and they might solely think about it on attraction.
They refiled the case final month in Mohave County, essentially the most conservative county within the state, the place Trump acquired 75% of the vote in 2020.
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DECISION 2022
Arizonans will go to the polls this November for the midterm elections. Here’s every part you’ll want to know main as much as election night time.
