Voter Protection Act blocking bipartisan bill
Rep. Leo Biasiucci was waiting his turn to fight a parking ticket in court when the idea came to him.
As the Lake Havasu City Republican watched people ahead of him tell the judge they couldn’t afford to pay their tickets, he wondered why there wasn’t a way to lift the financial burden. Payment plans weren’t an option; an additional fee is required to start one, he said.
Biasiucci’s HB2110, first introduced as HB2055 in 2020, proposes that judges could order people to do community service, valued at $12 an hour, as payment for their tickets rather than money.
Now, Republican state lawmakers in both chambers of the Legislature are pushing several bills that would undermine the vote-by-mail system that helped drive November s high Democratic turnout. One bill even seeks to eliminate entirely the permanent early voting list, which is a list of voters who are automatically sent mail-in ballots. The measures are at odds with the fact that the majority of Arizonans voted early in past election cycles and that the system has existed in the state for over a decade.
In the Arizona House of Representatives, Republican state Representatives Kevin Payne of Peoria and Walt Blackman of Snowflake have introduced a bill, HB 2370, that would repeal the permanent early voting list. Another bill proposed by Payne, HB 2369, would require that voter signatures on the envelopes holding early ballots be notarized. That means the voter would need to sign the ballot in front of a notary.