Top Election Expert Corrects the Record on Arizona Voting Bill

April 28, 2021

Washington — Last week, the Arizona Senate took up SB1485, a bill to clean up the state’s early voting list and remove registrations that have been inactive in two consecutive election cycles. Some lawmakers in the state have opposed the bill based on misunderstandings about the bill’s effects and timeline. Hans von Spakovsky, one of the nation’s foremost election law experts and a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, analyzed the bill and issued the following statement:

The text of Arizona Senate Bill 1485 is clear: it requires county recorders to remove voters from the early voting list who have failed to vote early in two consecutive election cycles. SB1485 will go into effect immediately after passage, not in 2026 as some have claimed. County recorders can, and should, lawfully begin cleaning up the early voting list well before the 2022 midterm election, based on voter participation in the 2018 and 2020 election cycles. While the bill specifies January 15, 2023, as the first deadline for removal, that is the last possible date for county recorders to begin the process, not the first chance.

Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action, a partner organization of The Heritage Foundation, added the following:

As Heritage Action and other conservative organizations have previously noted, SB1485 is a strong election integrity bill that deserves immediate passage. As the analysis from The Heritage Foundation shows, any assertions that this bill will be delayed until 2026 are simply incorrect. All conservatives should support this bill — we cannot delay in strengthening Arizona’s election system and restoring trust to voters.