Arizona Voting History: Swing State Shift, Laws, and 2020 Fallout

The history of voting in Arizona runs from a Republican stronghold admitted to the Union in February 1912 to one of the most closely divided states in the country, with 11 electoral votes, roughly 80% of ballots cast by mail, and a voter rolls where independents now outnumber either major party.¹² That transformation is also a legal history: who gets to vote, how they vote, and which votes count have all been contested in court for more than a century.

How Arizona Has Voted for President

From 1952 through 2016, Arizona backed the Republican presidential nominee in every election but one. Bill Clinton carried the state in 1996 with 46.5% to Bob Dole’s 44.3%.³ For much of that stretch the margins were lopsided. Ronald Reagan won Arizona by more than 30 points in 1984. George H.W. Bush took it by more than 20 points in 1988.

The margins narrowed through the 2000s. George W. Bush won by about 10 points in 2004. John McCain, the state’s own senator, won by roughly 8.5 points in 2008. Mitt Romney won by about 9 points in 2012. In 2016, Donald Trump carried Arizona by 3.6 points, 48.7% to 45.1% for Hillary Clinton.³

Then came 2020. Joe Biden won Arizona by roughly 10,000 votes, a margin of 0.3%, and his 49.4% was the highest share for a Democratic presidential candidate in the state since 1964.³ Four years later, Trump won the state back, defeating Kamala Harris 52.2% to 46.7%, a 5.5-point margin.⁴ Two cycles, two parties, both decided in a state that spent most of its history as a safe Republican bet.

Why Arizona Became a Swing State

Three forces explain the shift: one county, changing demographics, and a growing bloc of unaffiliated voters.

Maricopa County Decides

The Phoenix metropolitan area, centered in Maricopa County, drives Arizona results. Maricopa is the most populous county in the state and the fourth most populous in the country, and it accounted for more than 60% of all ballots cast statewide in 2020. Biden’s statewide victory rested on a 45,000-vote advantage in Maricopa alone, where he took 50.3%.⁵ Historically Republican, the county now holds significant Democratic strength, particularly in its suburbs. Pima County, which contains Tucson and makes up about 15% of the electorate, votes consistently Democratic.⁶

Who Lives in Arizona Now

Latino voters make up nearly one in four Arizona voters. The group has leaned Democratic historically, though recent cycles have shown movement toward Republicans among some Latino voters. Mormon voters, roughly 5% of the state’s population, have long favored Republicans but showed friction with Donald Trump, visible in high-profile breaks by former Senator Jeff Flake and former state House Speaker Rusty Bowers.⁶

The Independent Bloc

Arizona’s registration numbers tell the clearest story. As of April 2026, registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats 1,542,604 to 1,221,223, but about 1,496,589 voters, roughly 34.5% of all registrants, are unaffiliated with either party.² That pool is why statewide outcomes swing from cycle to cycle.

Turnout has risen alongside the state’s competitiveness. Presidential turnout in Arizona climbed 16.7 percentage points between 2000 and 2024, more than double the national increase of 8 points over the same period. In 2024, 57.6% of eligible Arizonans voted, slightly below 2020 and roughly in line with the 59% national rate.⁷

How Arizonans Actually Vote

Arizona is a mail-ballot state. Military personnel were first allowed to vote by mail in 1918, and absentee eligibility expanded over the following decades. In 1991, the legislature enacted no-excuse mail voting, letting any registered voter cast a ballot by mail without stating a reason. In 2007 Arizona created the Permanent Early Voting List, which automatically mailed a ballot to each enrolled voter for every eligible election.⁸

By 2020, roughly 89% of Arizona voters cast early ballots, mostly by mail. More than 80% of the more than one million Republicans who voted in that election were on the early list.⁸ About 80% of Arizona voters currently choose to vote by mail.¹

The list has since been renamed the Active Early Voting List, or AEVL. In May 2021, Governor Doug Ducey signed a law allowing counties to remove voters from the AEVL if they fail to cast a mail ballot in at least one election over two consecutive election cycles and do not respond to an official notice. Removal does not cancel voter registration; it only stops the automatic mailing.¹ Voters can also request a mail ballot for a single specific election without joining the list.⁹

Registration and ID

To register, a person must be a U.S. citizen, a county resident, and at least 18 by the next general election. Registration closes 29 days before an election. Voters can register online using an Arizona driver’s license or state ID, by mail, or in person at a county recorder’s office.¹⁰

Arizona runs a two-tier ballot system. Getting a “full ballot” covering federal, state, county, and local races requires documentary proof of citizenship. An Arizona driver’s license or non-operating ID issued after October 1, 1996 satisfies the requirement; otherwise a voter can submit a birth certificate, passport, naturalization papers, or tribal identification.¹¹ Voters who register using the federal form without proof of citizenship receive a “federal-only” ballot limited to president, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House.¹⁰ This split comes from a voter-approved 2004 law requiring proof of citizenship for state and local races, combined with a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that bars Arizona from imposing the same requirement for federal races.¹² All voters must also show proof of identity at the polls.

Who Was Kept From Voting

Arizona’s voting history includes a long record of excluding Native American and Latino residents from the ballot.

Native American Voters

The 1924 Indian Citizenship Act made all Native Americans U.S. citizens, but Arizona kept them off the rolls using a constitutional provision barring “persons under guardianship.” In the 1928 case Porter v. Hall, the Arizona Supreme Court held that because reservation Indians were subject to federal guardianship, they could not vote, which effectively disenfranchised the entire population for the next two decades.¹³

After World War II, in which Native Americans served in large numbers including as Code Talkers, the court reversed itself. On July 15, 1948, in Harrison v. Laveen, the Arizona Supreme Court overturned Porter, ruling that the guardianship language referred only to judicially established guardianship, not the federal trust relationship.¹⁴¹³

Legal access did not mean practical access. Arizona kept a literacy test requiring voters to read the U.S. Constitution and write their names in English until the 1970s. Illiteracy rates in some Native American communities reached 80 to 90%, largely a result of inadequate schooling. More than 100 lawsuits have been filed since 1948 to challenge voter suppression affecting Native Americans in Arizona. Barriers remain today: many reservations are rural and span hundreds of miles with few polling stations, about one in five reservation residents lacks access to a vehicle, and outside Maricopa and Pima Counties only 18% of reservation residents have physical addresses that receive mail.¹⁴

Latino Voters

The same literacy test was used against Latino voters. The 1909 law establishing the English requirement was explicitly intended to block the “ignorant Mexican vote.”¹⁵ For more than 60 years, it kept many Mexican American, Apache, and Navajo voters from the polls.¹⁶

Arizona’s record was severe enough that the state had to obtain federal “preclearance” under the Voting Rights Act before changing any election law. That requirement ended in 2013 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the preclearance formula in Shelby County v. Holder.¹⁵ Arizona is still required under the Voting Rights Act to provide translated voting materials and language assistance in 10 of its 15 counties, though advocacy groups report uneven compliance. Arizona also restricts voting rights for people with felony convictions, a policy that keeps 4.3% of the state’s adult population off the rolls. Today, 31% of Arizona residents are Latino and 5% are Native American.¹⁶

Election Law Changes Since 2020

Arizona has enacted more than a dozen voting laws since 2020, moving in both restrictive and expansive directions.

Restrictive measures made it harder to correct signature defects on absentee ballots, added requirements aimed at noncitizen voting (including a 2022 law that risks purging voters based on outdated records), and imposed criminal penalties on election workers for acts like sending mail ballots to voters who did not specifically request them.¹⁷ Parts of a 2022 law tried to require “federal-only” voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship for mail voting and presidential elections, but the Ninth Circuit struck those provisions down in February 2025.¹²

Expansive measures went the other way. A 2022 law eliminated the two-year waiting period for people with multiple felony convictions to apply for voting-rights restoration. Other laws extended early in-person voting hours on the Friday before Election Day, expanded voting options for people with visual impairments, and eased registration for fishing and gaming license applicants.¹⁷

The fight is active. In 2025, Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill that would have changed Election Day ballot drop-off procedures. Republican legislators have pre-filed a proposed constitutional amendment for 2026 that would require voters on the early voting list to re-confirm their address each election cycle, prohibit early ballot drop-offs after 7 p.m. on the Friday before an election, and require government-issued ID when casting a ballot. As a constitutional amendment, it would go directly to voters and bypass the governor’s veto.¹²

The 2020 Aftermath and the Election Denial Cases

Biden’s narrow 2020 win triggered a prolonged period of litigation, audits, and investigations. The results were certified, challenged, and affirmed. Under former Attorney General Mark Brnovich, the state spent more than 10,000 hours investigating alleged irregularities and public complaints. All were found to be unsupported by factual evidence. Attorney General Kris Mayes stated in March 2026 that these findings are “not in dispute by any credible authority.”¹⁸

The 2022 cycle delivered close races and another round of litigation. Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly won his U.S. Senate seat with 51.4% over Republican Blake Masters at 46.5%. Democrat Katie Hobbs defeated Republican Kari Lake by roughly one point in the governor’s race, and Democrat Adrian Fontes beat Republican Mark Finchem for secretary of state.¹⁹

Lake refused to accept the result. She filed suit in Maricopa County Superior Court in December 2022, lost at trial, received a partial retrial on one claim, and lost again in May 2023. The Arizona Supreme Court denied her final petition for review on November 7, 2024, ending the case.²⁰ In a related federal case, Lake and Finchem had sought to prohibit the use of electronic voting systems in Arizona. A district court dismissed for lack of standing, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed unanimously. Their attorneys were sanctioned and held jointly liable for $122,200 in fees; the Ninth Circuit upheld the sanction in 2025.²¹

Two of Lake’s attorneys faced individual discipline. The Arizona Supreme Court sanctioned Bryan Blehm in May 2023 for false claims about illegally inserted ballots and suspended his law license for 60 days in June 2024. Kurt Olsen was formally admonished in October 2024.²⁰²² Lake ran for U.S. Senate in 2024 and lost to Democrat Ruben Gallego.

Ballot Initiatives That Reshaped Arizona Elections

Arizona voters have used ballot initiatives to rewrite the rules of their own elections. In 2000, Proposition 106 created the Independent Redistricting Commission and took the drawing of congressional and legislative districts away from the state legislature. The commission has two Republicans, two Democrats, and one independent chair, and the state constitution requires it to start from scratch each cycle rather than modify existing maps.²³ The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the commission’s constitutionality in 2015.²⁴

In 1998, voters approved the Citizens Clean Elections Act (Proposition 200), creating a public campaign financing system run by a bipartisan five-member commission. Candidates who collect a threshold number of $5 qualifying contributions receive public funding in exchange for strict spending and contribution limits.²⁵ The system originally included a matching-funds provision that gave extra money to publicly funded candidates when privately funded opponents outspent them, but the U.S. Supreme Court struck that feature down as unconstitutional in 2011 in Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett, ruling it impermissibly used public money to penalize private political speech.²⁶ The program continues to operate without matching funds, and as of fiscal year 2024 the Citizens Clean Elections Fund held a balance of approximately $26.8 million.²⁷

In 2024, voters approved Proposition 139, which wrote abortion rights into the state constitution, guaranteeing access up to fetal viability (around 24 weeks) and allowing the procedure beyond that point to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.²⁸ The measure had been identified beforehand as a potential mobilizing force in the state’s elections.⁶ Taken together, the state’s initiatives, lawsuits, and legislation show that in Arizona, how votes get cast and counted is as politically contested as any name on the ballot.

1
Arizona Clean Elections Commission. Ballot by Mail
2
Arizona Secretary of State. Voter Registration Statistics
3
270toWin. Arizona Presidential Voting History
4
Politico. Arizona 2024 Election Results
5
The Guardian. Election Swing State Counties
6
Brookings Institution. What Do We Need to Know About the Swing State of Arizona
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MAP AZ Dashboard – University of Arizona. Voter Turnout
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Arizona Mirror. Republicans Helped Arizona Champion Voting by Mail. Now They Want It Gone
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Arizona Secretary of State. Early Voting
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Arizona Secretary of State. Registering to Vote
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Maricopa County Elections. Register to Vote
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Arizona Mirror. GOP Pushes Constitutional Amendment to Restrict Arizona Early Voting
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Arizona State Law Journal. Native American Voting Rights in Arizona
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Arizona Historical Society. Fighting for a Voice: Native Americans’ Right to Vote in Arizona
15
Brennan Center for Justice. Latino Communities on the Front Lines of Voter Suppression
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Center for Public Integrity. Court Battles Test Arizona’s Long History of Voter Suppression
17
Brennan Center for Justice. How Voting Laws Have Changed in Battleground States Since 2020
18
Arizona Attorney General. Attorney General Mayes Issues Statement on Federal Grand Jury Subpoena
19
NBC News. Arizona Senate Results
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Arizona Mirror. AZ Supreme Court Rejects Kari Lake’s Last Remaining Bid to Overturn Her 2022 Loss
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Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Lake v. Gates
22
Washington Post. Kari Lake Election Denial Lawsuit Settled
23
Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission
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Arizona Legislature. Arizona Reapportionment and Redistricting
25
Arizona Secretary of State. Proposition 200 – Citizens Clean Elections Act
26
Goldwater Institute. McComish v. Bennett – Clean Elections
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Arizona Joint Legislative Budget Committee. Citizens Clean Elections Commission Baseline
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NPR. Arizona Abortion Amendment Results