Aghogho Edevbie, state director for the All Voting Is Local voting-rights group, urged lawmakers to allow two full weeks of early in-person voting, calling the Republican plan “painfully inadequate.”
Voting rights advocates broadly criticize the law, and are particularly concerned that the way the law is written—that if you do not cast an early ballot in any elections, for two consecutive election cycles, you will be kicked off the list. “If you vote in person that will still trigger the provisions of this [law] to begin the process of purging you from the list,” says Alex Gulotta, Arizona state director for All Voting is Local. That is “insidious,” he adds.
Rosemary Avila, campaign manager for All Voting is Local Arizona, called it “a brazenly harmful, unnecessary attempt to put up barriers between voters and the ballot.”
Brad Ashwell, the state director for All Voting is Local, said changes due to the law could keep a lot of voters away.
“Any time there is an obstacle to voting, it’s going to disproportionately impact more vulnerable communities and those communities that are already challenged by the existing system. That’s typically Black voters, Hispanic voters,” he said.
“This subpoena and this audit is not dissimilar to what’s happening with a number of bills being pushed nationally that basically take fair, objective processes and move them into partisan political bodies,” said Alex Gulotta, the state’s director of All Voting Is Local, a national voting-rights advocacy group. “This is not an aberration. This is a window into the future of where some people would like our elections to go.”
“By erecting onerous barriers to request and return a vote-by-mail ballot, this legislature has made voting a test of stamina and resources rather than a statement of civic responsibility,” said Brad Ashwell, Florida state director for All Voting is Local, a national voting rights group.
