IN FOCUS - May, 8, 2026

Nearly 3 out of 4 Arizona ballots were cast by mail during the 2024 General Election. Now, a local group is mounting an effort to protect mail-in voting by enshrining the practice in the Arizona Constitution.

This week, a Democrat-led coalition calling itself Protect the Vote Arizona launched its petition drive to qualify the Free, Fair and Secure Elections Act for the November ballot. If approved, the measure would make no-excuse mail-in voting a constitutional right, as well as guarantee use of vote centers (open to any voter, as Maricopa County currently uses) and early in-person voting until the Monday evening before each election.

The initiative is largely a response to threats from President Trump and allies to end or significantly curtail universal mail-in and early voting.

Backers must collect at least 383,923 valid signatures by July 2 to qualify for the November ballot. In order to give itself some cushion, the group has set a target to collect a half-million signatures - about 10X the number it has garnered thus far.

The proposal follows multiple rounds of attempted GOP-led voting reforms following the 2020 elections. Divided government has blocked more recent legislative efforts, but Republicans in 2021 were successful in eliminating the Permanent Early Voter List. Now, county election administrators can remove voters from the mail-in voter list if they don’t use their early ballot at least once in consecutive election cycles and they fail to respond to a notice from their county.

Protect the Vote Arizona will likely need to spend millions of dollars to gather the necessary signature petitions in the less than two months that remain before the deadline. Then, if they survive any legal challenges, there is a campaign to win.

President Trump and supporters, meanwhile, face steep challenges of their own in pursuing election reforms at a federal level via the SAVE Act. The U.S. House has approved the measure, but the measure appears at a dead-end in the Senate.