Arizona legislators passed a bipartisan bill Thursday that would change the date of the state’s primary to allow more time for votes to be counted in an effort to avoid electoral complications ahead of the 2024 presidential election. 

Arizona enacted a law in 2022 that raised the threshold for an automatic recount from 0.1% to 0.5%. Last year, election officials told the Washington Post that the automatic recount rules could leave them scrambling to recount votes if the election was close, possibly causing the state to miss deadlines in order to have their votes counted in time.  

The new alteration would change the state’s Aug. 6 primary date to July 30 and allow service members and those voting overseas enough time to receive their ballots. The bill would also allow counties an additional 19 days post-primary and 17 days after the general election to count votes, the Associated Press reported. Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) praised the new bill, which will need her signature to finalize its approval. 

“While this legislation isn’t perfect, it’s the result of hard-fought compromises from everyone involved. Arizonans can rest assured that their voices will be heard and that our elections will run free of political interference,” Hobbs said in a post to X. 

State Rep. Alexander Kolodin sponsored the bill, saying the proposal addresses Republicans’ yearslong complaints over the state’s election integrity, according to the outlet.

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“There is no complaint that I hear more — or more vociferously — from our grassroots than that this body did not use leverage in order to get election integrity signed into law,” Kolodin said. “Today we remedy that error.” 

In 2020, as former President Donald Trump challenged election results in battleground states, Arizona came under scrutiny when President Joe Biden bested Trump by 10,457 votes, which didn’t result in an automatic recount under the original threshold rules.