GOP Arizona State Senator Rejects Controversial Voting Bill Pending Election Audit

A controversial election bill was surprisingly voted down in Arizona on Thursday.

A Republican state senator broke ranks and voted against a GOP-backed measure that could remove tens of thousands of voters from the state's early ballot mailing list.

Sen. Kelly Townsend voted twice earlier this year for Senate Bill 1485, which would remove voters from the state's popular Permanent Early Voting List — a list of voters who are automatically mailed ballots for every election in which they're eligible to vote — if they don't use their ballot at least once in two straight two-year election cycles.

Democrats have decried the measure as part of a nationwide Republican effort to make voting harder in the wake of the 2020 election.

But Republicans hold one-vote majorities in both chambers of the Arizona Legislature, making it impossible for Democrats to defeat the bill on their own.

On Thursday, Townsend sunk the proposal on her own.

Townsend said she informed GOP leadership that she will no longer vote for any election legislation until after Senate Republicans complete an audit and hand recount of the 2020 general election in Maricopa County, Arizona's largest county.