On November 9, 2024, the Associated Press called Arizona for Donald Trump. Arizona was the last state the media called — four days after Election Day. As Arizona Senate president, I know that kind of delay can’t happen again. Voters deserve timely results, especially in a pivotal battleground state.
The outcome of the presidential race became clear in the early hours of election night, November 6. But Arizona’s slow count still invited unnecessary angst — and would have fueled mistrust if the margin had been tighter. It doesn’t have to work this way. That’s why we’re looking at common-sense, bipartisan reforms that improve transparency and speed without compromising integrity.
If the governor won’t work with the legislature on meaningful reforms, we will take this directly to the voters in the November general election.
Florida shows what’s possible. Over the past few cycles, Florida has counted the vast majority of ballots within hours of polls closing. Races get called, electoral votes get assigned, and the country moves on.
Florida didn’t arrive there by accident. The “hanging chads” debacle of 2000 forced the state to rebuild confidence through clearer rules and cleaner procedures. In 2024, more than 3 million Floridians voted by mail, more than 5 million voted early, and more than 2.5 million voted on Election Day. Florida counted 99% of those ballots before midnight. That’s a standard Arizona should meet.
So what does Florida do differently?
First, Florida keeps clear lanes for voting: vote by mail, early voting, and Election Day voting. Each lane has its own procedures, and voters understand the differences.
Second, Florida limits Election Day drop-offs. Vote-by-mail ballots can be returned at early voting locations, but on Election Day they must be delivered to the supervisor of elections — Florida’s equivalent of Arizona’s county recorders — not dropped at every polling place.
Third, Florida removes needless envelope handling for in-person early voting. Envelopes belong with vote-by-mail ballots, not in-person voting. Early in-person voters use the same ballots and the same tabulators used on Election Day — they just vote during the early window.
Fourth, Florida posts key numbers on election night. Counties must report how many vote-by-mail ballots they have received and how many remain uncounted. That kind of transparency reduces speculation and stops the “How many ballots are still out there?” spiral that frustrates voters across the country.
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My team and I — joined by state senators, representatives, and county officials — met with Florida’s secretary of state to discuss how Arizona could adopt similar reforms. I hope Democrats and county officials will join this effort. Election integrity, transparency, efficiency, and certainty shouldn’t be partisan. Too often, they have turned into a Republican-versus-Democrat fight, with the left resisting reforms that would give voters more confidence in the process.
Consider a bill my Republican colleagues and I pushed in 2023 and again in 2025. It required voters who held on to their mailed ballots until the Friday before Election Day to meet the same voter ID requirements as other voters when dropping those ballots off. The bill would also have reduced the burden of signature verification on hundreds of thousands of ballots — one major reason Arizona results can take days, even weeks.
Both times, it passed the legislature on party-line votes and Governor Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed it. Her veto message offered little justification, claiming only that the bill didn’t “meaningfully address the real challenges facing Arizona voters.”
That pattern has repeated. Even with growing support for faster election-night results — including an unlikely endorsement from a columnist at one of Arizona’s major newspapers — the governor and her allies have refused to consider reforms that would deliver timely results and clearer transparency.
Arizona voters deserve better than delays and uncertainty. If the governor won’t work with the legislature on meaningful reforms, we will take this directly to the voters in the November general election. If Democrats won’t fix what’s broken, Arizonans will.
Republicans in the Arizona legislature have reintroduced bills to reform our system. We should tailor solutions to Arizona, but nobody should fear mirroring a model that works. Florida proves that speed and integrity can coexist.
Election integrity, transparency, and timely results aren’t red or blue issues. They’re American issues. Arizona has an opportunity — and an obligation — to deliver results voters can trust, on election night.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on March 23 regarding whether federal Election Day law pre-empts a state law allowing election workers to count mail-in ballots received after Election Day.
A band of conservatives including Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) urge the high court in an amicus brief to be filed on Thursday to consider the inevitable harms that would follow permitting states to flout the Constitution and render Election Day little more than an "abstraction," Blaze News has exclusively learned.
'Congress chose one day for federal elections, and one day only.'
The case in question, Watson v. Republican National Committee, is the result of a years-long battle over a COVID-era Mississippi law passed by the Magnolia State's Republican trifecta that permits the counting of mail-in absentee ballots postmarked by the date of the election but received up to five business days after Election Day.
The RNC and the Mississippi GOP stressed at the outset that mail-in voting is "starkly polarized by party" and "the late-arriving mail-in ballots that are counted for five additional days disproportionately break for Democrats."
While it has narrowed since 2020, the partisan divide in mail-in voting remained substantial in the 2024 election — which helps explain why so many Democrat-aligned groups have defended the practice and the Mississippi law.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against Mississippi in October 2024, stating that its late-ballot counting statute was pre-empted by federal law. Last year, however, the state asked SCOTUS to get involved and reinstate its post-Election Day grace period.
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Mississippi maintains that late counts are acceptable as "federal election-day statutes require only that the voters cast their ballots by election day" — that "an election requires ballot casting — not ballot receipt."
Sen. Lee, eight other GOP senators, and 15 congressional Republicans joined the American Center for Law and Justice in filing an amicus brief on Thursday in support of the legal challenge, underscoring that Mississippi's absentee ballot scheme threatens the electoral reliability and uniformity "foundational to democratic government."
Lee said in a statement to Blaze News, "Congress, exercising its constitutional authority to set the times, places, and manner of federal elections, designated one federal Election Day."
"States counting ballots received after Election Day clearly violate the certainty, finality, and trust Congress intended to establish by having nationwide elections take place on one set date," continued the senator.
The brief:
"A Constitution that so jealously rationed federal power chose, in this specific domain, to speak unequivocally: Congress would have the last word in the 'Times' of Elections for federal officers," says the brief. "Congress exercised that power here. It picked a day. One day."
The brief intimated that should the state law and the corresponding legal interpretation stand, the "very evils Congress enacted the Election Day statutes to prevent — rolling elections, strategic voting, and prolonged uncertainty" — would be likely become inevitable.
The brief suggests further that to treat Election Day as a "philosophical concept untethered to actual deadlines" would liberate states from much-needed guardrails and render them "free to continue the election well beyond the Congressional mandated election day."
"Congress chose one day for federal elections, and one day only," the brief says in closing. "The counting of late-arrived ballots [flouts] this choice by altering the pool of received votes after Election Day, in other words, by changing the results of an election that has already taken place."
Sen. Lee noted that he looks forward "to the Supreme Court recognizing that states are not permitted to conduct interminable rolling elections with late-arriving ballot surprises that invite fraud and undermine trust in American elections."
Should the high court affirm that federal law pre-empts the state law, 18 other states would likely be impacted.
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While the Supreme Court on Monday expressed skepticism about states accepting mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, an overwhelming majority of voters have already decided against the practice, according to a recent poll conducted just days before the high court heard oral arguments in Watson v. RNC. As The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood reported, Watson […]
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