What the current political climate means for future Arizona elections

By Steve Goldstein
Published: Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - 12:00pm

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Voters line up at a polling station
Sky Schaudt/KJZZ
Voters line up at a polling station at an Arizona Motor Vehicle Division office in north Phoenix on Nov. 3, 2020.

Concerns about voting on the left and right have been evident for decades, with one side more focused on disenfranchisement of voters and the other expressing more worries about proper identification and registration of voters.

The differences — and the tension — were ratcheted up in 2020 with former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, and we’ve seen more of the same in 2021 with the so-called audit of Maricopa County ballots.

How dire is the situation now, and can cooler heads come together to improve it and find common ground on possible changes to how elections are carried out?

To learn about this, The Show spoke with John Fortier of the American Enterprise Institute. He’s in the Valley Nov. 9 as part of Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership’s Future of Arizona Democracy event.

Fortier talked about the confusion seen in 2020 as some people from outside Arizona were criticizing the state's carrying out of elections in ways that indicated they didn’t understand the rules here.

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