June 21, 2021 Trending Politics by Kyle Becker
The Arizona Senate is not only auditing Maricopa County’s election results to review the 2020 results, but it has now passed a new election integrity bill that will have tighter security in forthcoming elections. The bill would refer voters to the state AG for voter fraud investigation if they chose not to cure their ballot if it’s flagged for a signature mismatch. The bill has passed the Senate 31-29 and goes to the House.
The election bill SB 1241 will require such signature verification on ballots, as well as other security measures.
“A person may not access any area where servers or hard drives that contain election-related data are stored unless the person is preapproved by or directly supervised by the county recorder or other officer in charge of elections,” the bill states.
“On receipt of the envelope containing the early ballot and the ballot affidavit, the county recorder or other officer in charge of elections shall compare the signatures thereon with the signature of the elector on the elector’s registration record,” it continues. ” If the signature is inconsistent with the elector’s signature on the elector’s registration record, the county recorder or other officer in charge of elections shall make reasonable efforts to contact the voter, advise the voter of the inconsistent signature and allow the voter to correct or the county to confirm the inconsistent signature.”
“The county recorder or other officer in charge of elections shall allow signatures to be corrected not later than the fifth business day after a primary, general or special election that includes a federal office or the third business day after any other election,” the legislation continues. “If satisfied that the signatures correspond, the recorder or other officer in charge of elections shall hold the envelope containing the early ballot and the completed affidavit unopened in accordance with the rules of the secretary of state.”
“The county recorder shall send a list of all voters who were issued early ballots to the election board of the precinct in which the voter is registered,” the bill also stipulates.
The Senate bill also provided further regulations over voting machine companies’ role in vote-tabulation, such as forbidding Internet or remote access at any time and strict chain-of-custody documentation over all ballot images, including adjudicated ballot images and retained on official record.
The legislation passes amidst an independent election audit of Maricopa County that has received national attention, as well as drawn the ire of left-wing media critics who believe the audit is partisan and unfounded. Hopefully, the legislation passed today will help prevent similar controversy from ever happening again in future elections.
Share This Post...
