A bill that would return voting to precincts instead of at large vote centers passed the State House of Representatives along party lines on Tuesday, 32-26. If HCR 2002, sponsored by Representative Rachel Jones (R-Tucson), passes the State Senate, it will be sent to the ballot since it is a House Concurrent Resolution, bypassing any likely veto by Governor Katie Hobbs. The bill would establish precincts with no larger than one thousand registered voters, and states that county supervisors may not revert back to vote centers.
Republicans who support the bill say it’s necessary due to the botched 2022 election, where ballot on demand printers failed to print the proper sized ballots, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters. With precinct level voting, there is no need for those printers, since ballots don’t need to be customized for each person regardless of where they vote within the county, they are printed in advance specific to each precinct.
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