PHOENIX — In less than 200 days, ballots for the 2024 Presidential Preference Election will be mailed to Arizona voters.
If you think it is too early for most people to be thinking about next year’s elections, you would be right.
David Becker, a nationally known expert on election administration and the head of the Center for Election Innovation & Research agrees.
“This is supposed to be the quietest time of an election season, 17 months out from a presidential election,” he said.
Becker joined Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates in a roundtable with local journalists to discuss next year’s elections. One topic that frequently came up was who would be running the 2024 elections.
“In Nevada, I believe at least 10 of the 17 (counties) are seeing new election officials,” Becker said. “Some of them there have sympathy towards the election denialism movement.”
Gates, a conservative Republican says he is not running for re-election for health reasons, mainly connected to the stress of the past few years dealing with election deniers.
Despite this, he has a different take.
“We have to have people from across the spectrum. That’s extremely important,” he said. “Including people who believe in election denial. Fortunately, we have all sorts of eyeballs down at MCTEC (the election warehouse) so we’re watching that.”
Also discussed at the roundtable was the high turnover of election officials in Arizona since the 2020 election. According to the Secretary of State’s Office, 10 of Arizona’s 15 counties have lost top election staff. Two counties, Cochise and Pinal, have all new staff.
One major cause for the turnover is threats against election officials, which Becker says are increasing. Among other things, his organization pairs election officials with pro bono attorneys and he told the roundtable requests for assistance in June of this year are at a high watermark.
“It’s not just in swing states,” he said. “It is of extreme concern to me because it’s not just about chasing these people out of office, it is about making them feel vulnerable and isolated.”
Despite the concerns, both men have faith that the system will hold.
During the last few moments of the roundtable, Gates made this clear, “This is about truth versus lies.”
