Arizona makes it easier to purge some from early voting list

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday signed legislation making it easier to purge infrequent voters from a list of those who automatically get a mail-in ballot each election, ignoring protests from Democrats and prominent business leaders who said the measure would suppress the votes of people of color.

The Republican governor acted hours after a tense debate in the state Senate, during which Republicans tried to silence Democrats who said the bill would perpetuate systemic racism.

The legislation is part of a wave of proposals to reduce voting access that have passed in Republican-controlled states around the country following former President Donald Trump's defeat last year.

Republicans have only a single-vote edge in the Arizona House and Senate, so their legislation has been tougher to pass than in other states like Florida, which just made all voters reapply for a mail ballot every two years rather than dropping ones who aren’t active enough.

Repeated reviews have found no problems with the election results in Arizona or elsewhere, but many Trump supporters still believe his loss was the result of fraud. Contractors hired by Senate Republicans are still doing a hand recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County as part of a sprawling review of the vote count in the nation’s fourth-largest county, which includes metro Phoenix.

The measure signed Tuesday would remove people who don’t return their mail-in ballot for two consecutive election cycles from the permanent early voting list, which allows voters to automatically receive a ballot before each election. About 75% of Arizona voters are on the list. Affected voters would get a mailer asking if they want to remain on the list, and they would be removed if they don’t respond within 90 says.

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