Scotty Kirby

Katie Hobbs

The state’s top election official is urging the state Supreme Court to reject a bid by the Arizona Republican Party to kill all early voting.

An attorney for Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said the GOP claims are “legally baseless” and “threaten our democracy.”

Attorney General Mark Brnovich also urged the justices to reject the case, but for purely legal matters. Brnovich, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate, took no position on the claim by his party that early voting is illegal.

In court filings Friday, Roopali Desai, an attorney for Hobbs, said that the legal filings by the GOP attacking the legality of the long-held practice are little more than “cherry-picked words and phrases from various parts of the Constitution.” The lawsuit ignores the clear intent of the framers of the Constitution to leave the details of how people vote up to the Legislature, she added.

Desai told the justices there is also something more sinister in the bid by the party and one of its members to kill not just a century of absentee voting and more than three decades of no-excuse early voting.

“Their claims are part of a broader ongoing effort to sow doubt about our electoral process to justify infringing voting rights,” she said. Even as the case is pending, Republican lawmakers are moving to impose new restrictions on early voting.

→ Get more Arizona politics news

In a separate filing, Brnovich didn’t defend Arizona’s early voting law, but argued the Supreme Court cannot hear cases against the state that go directly to the justices.

The heart of the case is the claim that the only form of voting specifically authorized in the Arizona Constitution is in-person and on Election Day. What that means, the challengers say, is that anything else — including the current system of no-excuse early ballots created by the Legislature in 1991 — is illegal.

To buttress that argument, attorney Alexander Kolodin cited provisions in the constitution dealing with ballot measures. It says that they are put on the ballot “in such a manner that the electors may express at the polls” their approval or disapproval.

“The ordinary meaning of ‘polls’ is one of the places where the votes are cast at an election,” Kolodin contends.

Desai, however, called that a “tortured interpretation of the Arizona Constitution.” More to the point, she said there actually is only one section of the constitution that deals with the method of voting: “All elections by the people shall be by ballot, or by such other method as may be prescribed by law, provided that secrecy in voting shall be preserved.”

“This language is clear,” Desai wrote. “It ensures the right to a secret ballot but leaves the precise methods of voting to the Legislature.”

And the Legislature, she said, has decided it is within its powers.

She noted that lawmakers adopted multiple mail-in voting statutes just years after the constitution was adopted. In subsequent years, legislators agreed to permit early voting by those who were ill or would be out of their precinct on election day. And in 1991 the Legislature approved the current system that allows anyone to request an early ballot without having to provide an excuse.