“Those people don’t get their ballots in the mail,” said Alex Gulotta, the state director of All Voting Is Local, a voting rights group. “They may try to vote and they will find that they are no longer registered and it is too late to register, and they will in fact be banned from this election in November.”
Understand the struggle for voting rights in the US
Why is voting rights a problem now? In 2020, as a result of the pandemic, millions of people have embraced voting in person or by mail, especially among Democrats. Spurred on by Donald Trump’s false claims about mail ballots in hopes of undoing the election, the GOP has pursued a host of new voting restrictions.
The concerns about tens of thousands of additional voters losing their registration are rooted in a 1996 state law requiring proof of citizenship to obtain a driver’s license. Because of that law, the state could assume that anyone who registered to vote with a driver’s license had already proven their citizenship. But 192,000 people in Arizona have pre-1996 driver’s licenses, according to the state’s Department of Transportation.
Sam Almy, a Democratic strategist, attempted a partisan breakdown of who would be affected by the new law by comparing those who had not updated their voter registration in Arizona since 2004 to a Democratic voter base. According to Mr Almy, 45 percent of voters potentially affected were Republicans, compared to 36 percent who were Democrats. Nearly 90 percent of voters were over 50 years old.
Mr Greenbaum said it is unclear whether the new law would immediately be applied retroactively to affected voters. He also said it was unclear whether anyone would be notified if their registration had become invalid.
As in other states, local election officials in Arizona have faced limited funding, threats to their security and new, tougher penalties for mistakes.
A bipartisan group of local election officials wrote to Governor Ducey last week asking to veto the bill, criticizing its “unconstitutionality” and saying it would “put county recorders and election officials in an untenable position to try to comply with state law while at the same time clearly in violation of the federal law on national voter registration.”
Local election officials warned of another logistical headache: The law, as signed, would come into effect 90 days after the legislature is adjourned for the year, which could not be until June. But the Arizona primaries are set for Aug. 2, which could mean the primaries will be held under the old laws and the general election must abide by the new law.