With a drastic increase in mail ballots, Arizona has a great opportunity to reach for the gold standard of post-election security by implementing risk limiting audits. Audits must be done by professional, nonpartisan experts like local election officials, and should not be conducted by actors of one party under any circumstances.

We highly recommend implementing vote centers, or polling locations where any voter in the county can vote, in all counties. This is a way to streamline the system so over time, as the share of the vote cast by mail increases, counties can have fewer overall polling locations, while individual voters will have more voting location options.

Ballot tracking software such as Ballot Scout or Ballot TRACE can be a very cost effective tool to improve Arizona’s current ballot tracking and increase voter confidence by allowing voters to track their ballot much like an Amazon package. It also adds a layer of data for the elections office who can also track the ballots to make sure they have reached their destination. Furthermore, these tools can be used as another modality to contact voters if there is a signature mismatch or deficiency on their return envelope. An expanded notification system helps keep rejection rates low and increases voter confidence and participation.

Arizona’s data infrastructure would be further improved by implementing automatic and same day voter registration. Both of these would ensure that any eligible resident who wants to cast a ballot in an election can, regardless of whether they have submitted their registration forms on time.

Arizona’s current cure deadline of Election Day for missing signatures leaves many voters behind, as it leaves many voters without sufficient time to sign their ballot envelopes before it gets rejected. We recommend making the deadline to cure missing signatures the same as the state’s deadline to cure non-matching signatures, which is 5 business days after election day.