Arizona's Push To Limit Mail-In Voting — And What It Reveals About Voting Rights Nationwide

Published March 31, 2021 at 10:00 AM EDT

An Arizona voter delivers her mail-in ballot at a polling station for the Arizona presidential preference election in Phoenix. (Matt York/AP Photo)

Georgia’s new election law isn’t the only major voting change in the works. We look at efforts in Arizona to limit how people vote by mail.

Guests

Jeremy Duda, associate editor at the Arizona Mirror. Author of “If This Be Treason.” (@jeremyduda)

Michelle Ugenti-Rita, Arizona state senator. (@MichelleUgenti)

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst. (@JackBeattyNPR)

Bertrall Ross, professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. (@Bertrall_Ross)

Randy Perez, program director at the Voting Rights Lab. (@perez4az)

From The Reading List

NBC: “Arizona Republicans push new laws to limit mail voting” — “Arizona Republicans are proposing drastic changes to its mail voting systems, a move thatechoes the flurryof election restrictionsadvanced in GOP-controlled legislaturesina number of statesafter former President Donald Trump’s election loss.”

The Atlantic: “The Republican Party’s Irrational War on Voting Rights” — “Republican legislators insist that they’re merely responding to the righteous indignation of their voters as they pursue a raft of new rules that would make voting more difficult. ‘When you have this many constituents that are emailing us and calling us and demanding that their questions be answered, it always should be a top priority,’ Karen Fann, the president of the [Arizona] state Senate,told theLos Angeles Times. ‘If that’s what’s important to our voters, we take care of it.'”

AZ Central: “Arizona has suppressed Black, Latino and Native American voters for more than a century” — “The [Voting Rights Act] recognized that race-based voter suppression was more prominent in some areas of the country, so it created a formula to identify those areas and impose stricter remedies.

“Any state or locality that maintained a ‘test or device,’ such as a literacy test, that restricted voting registration or voting and had a voter registration of less than 50% was subject to those remedies […] From the start, Arizona was on that list.”

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.