State Sen. Kelly Townsend (R-Mesa) took a lot of heat from unexpected places when she voted “no” on legislation, SB 1485, that would remove infrequent voters from Arizona’s Permanent Early Voting List, effectively turning it into an “active” early voting list.
Her rejection of the bill seemed a sudden reversal by someone who herself has introduced a series of voter reform bills. It wasn’t.
She told the Grand Canyon Times that she had warned her Republican colleagues beforehand that she would vote against SB 1485 unless her bills, and other bills that secure future elections, were brought up for consideration.
State Sen. Kelly Townsend (R-Mesa)
“What I didn’t want is for us to pass this bill, call it 'reform' and then go home,” Townsend said.
She added that besides pushing for the passage of additional reform legislation, she opposes adjourning session until a forensics audit of nearly 2.1 million votes cast in November 2020 in Maricopa County is complete.
“My word stands for something, and I kept it,” she said.
The AZ Free News, citing elections expert Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation, eviscerated her saying that she gave “significantly incorrect information” to Breitbart News about “her refusal to vote for one of the Republican caucus’s most impactful election integrity bill.”
But Townsend says that her information, based on an analysis of the legislation by the Legislative Council, was accurate; the provisions of the SB 1485 would not kick in until 2026. She also said that she knew the bill would be back for reconsideration.
The strategy seems to have paid off. Her election reform legislation is now being worked into other active reform bills in the Senate. Among the changes, her language tightens the chain of custody in processing ballots, ensures election observers are allowed to observe and not be positioned to “stare at the back of a machine," and ensures that voting procedural manuals match voting statutes.
Townsend is also pushing for further extensions of session –- accomplished by a simple majority vote –- so that lawmakers are in session when the Maricopa audit is complete. (The session has already been extended once beyond its scheduled April 24 sine die adjournment.)
“I’m being told now the audit will take until at least June,” she said. “We have to be in to react quickly to the findings. If we leave before that, the governor is not going to call us back."
Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott) hired Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based cybersecurity firm, to lead the audit, which began on April 30.
Townsend was elected to the state Senate (District 16) in November 2020. She was a member of the House from 2013 to 2021 and Majority Whip from 2017 to 2018.
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