State Representative Rachel Keshel (R-17) issued a statement praising President Donald Trump's late March executive order demanding election integrity, saying, "This Executive Order is exactly what this country needs."
As Cactus Politics previously explained, Trump's Executive Order 14248, also known as "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections," requires the implementation of several election integrity measures, such as having the Election Assistance Commission require more rigorous proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
Similarly, the State and Homeland Security Departments and Social Security must allow states to access federal databases to verify the eligibility of people registering to vote, establish an Election Day deadline for tabulating ballots, and deny federal funding to any states that do not comply.
Does Texas have a constitutional right to defy Supreme Court on protecting its border?
"This Executive Order is exactly what this country needs. It puts Americans — not machines, not foreign influence, not barcode algorithms — back in charge of their elections," said State Rep. Keshel.
Her press release described how Arizona uses a barcode system for vote tabulation: Voters fill in their choice by hand, which is scanned into a code read by machines that do not read written text. In other words, the barcode is the point of tabulation, not the filled-in bubble or write-in vote.
"This system is a slap in the face to every voter in Arizona who thinks their ballot speaks for them," Rep. Keshel said, adding, "What good is a hand-marked ballot if a machine replaces it with a code we can't even read?"
As a result, she further praised Trump's executive order as "the first step" and said, "More reforms are coming — and they should. We are not going to sit by while this nation's elections are left in the hands of machines and foreign money. We are taking our elections back. This isn't complicated. We need elections that every voter can understand, witness, and trust. Machines don't vote. Americans do."
Keshel also called for several changes to Arizona's electoral system, including a return to hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots in time for the 2026 elections.
