Rep. John Kavanagh, a Fountain Hills Republican who chairs the Government and Elections Committee that advanced Ugenti-Rita’s measure on a party-line vote Wednesday, said GOP lawmakers are concerned about what happens to ballots automatically sent to people who have moved or have died.
He acknowledged that the concerns about those ballots being cast fraudulently are “anecdotal, because obviously if nobody’s there and they throw it away, you wouldn’t know. And if nobody’s there and they vote it and do a good duplicate of the signature, you wouldn’t know.”
“There’s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans,” Kavanagh said. “Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they’re willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”
He pointed to Democrats’ emphasis on registering voters and pursuing those who have not returned ballots — tactics that Republicans have successfully implemented in other swing states — and said doing so means that “you can greatly influence the outcome of the election if one side pays people to actively and aggressively go out and retrieve those ballots.”
“Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues,” Kavanagh said. “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”