The far-right Arizona Free Enterprise Club, which got the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature to refer their voter suppression initiative to the ballot to save them the time and expense of having to circulate initiative petitions, is now using the money they saved to pay a Republican lawyer to challenge the legitimate citizens initiative from thousands of voters who signed petitions for the Arizona Fair Elections Act initiative.
They are also represented by the Arizona Republican Party’s lawyer, Kory Laghofer. It’s all a very incestual relationship with the Arizona Republican Party – Republican legislators are the true plaintiffs, but not named parties to this lawsuit. They use the Arizona Free Enterprise Club as a proxy.
This is what they do. In Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, 564 U.S. 721 (2011), the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a provision of the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act of 1998 related to campaign finance. This dark money group is all about the wealthy being able to secretly buy elections with their vast sums of money, and to hell with what the citizens of Arizona think.
Howard Fischer reports, Group seeks to knock election-changes initiative off Arizona ballot:
A group advocating for more voter ID requirements is now trying to keep Arizonans from weighing in on a competing measure that would loosen them.
A lawsuit filed by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club claims that Arizonans for Free and Fair Elections did not submit sufficient valid signatures for its initiative. The club is asking a Maricopa County judge to block it from appearing on the November ballot.
But attorney Jim Barton, who represents the initiative backers, said he is convinced there is no merit to the complaint.
The measure being challenged contains a laundry list of changes to state election laws.
For example, it would allow people to register and vote at the same time, including on Election Day. People would be registered to vote automatically when they get an Arizona driver’s license unless they opted out.
It also would reinstate the state’s permanent early voting list, which automatically provides a ballot by mail for any voter who requests it, overturning a decision last year by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
In seeking to disqualify the measure, challengers alleged a series of violations of laws that affect the signature-gathering process for initiatives.
You know, those hyper-technical rules that Republicans enacted into law to render your constitutional right to citizens initiatives a nullity.
These include circulators gathering signatures before they registered with the Secretary of State’s Office as required by law, failing to provide a full and complete residential address, and failing to write their full and correct assigned circulator number on the front and back of one or more of the petition sheets.
Note that they are not alleging that any of the signatures on the petitions are not valid signatures from Arizona voters. They are relying on those hyper-technical rules that Republicans enacted into law to render your constitutional right to citizens initiatives a nullity.
Violations of law by circulators disqualify all the [valid] signatures they gathered. The challengers argue that would leave the measure short of the 237,645 valid signatures needed to go to voters.
Dueling ballot measures
At the heart of the lawsuit are two decidedly different views about election laws.
The Free Enterprise Club is behind a measure put on the November ballot by lawmakers to require more voter identification.
Those going to the polls would have to provide a photo ID. That would override existing options where voters can bring in two documents without a photo that contain a person’s name and address, like a utility bill, vehicle registration or property tax statement.
The proposal would also impose new mandates on those who vote early and by mail.
Current law says a ballot is presumed valid if the signature on the envelope matches what county election officials have on file. But Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, the sponsor of the measure, said that is insufficient to restore voter confidence.
The confidence of Republicans who are literally having a freak out over felt tip pens to mark ballots right now. Nothing would ever satisfy these insane people.
Instead, the measure would add the requirement of an affidavit with the voter’s date of birth and the number from one of several acceptable forms of identification such as a driver’s license or the last four digits of a person’s Social Security number.
So are you questioning the integrity of every election since 1992 when early voting mail-in ballots first came into use? For 30 years Republicans who enacted early voting by mail-in ballots and the Permanent Early Vting List (PEVL), and also had ballot collection programs, never questioned signature validation, until an orange buffoon demagogue told them it was voter fraud, and like lemmings they all jumped off the cliff for his Big Lie.
That is in direct conflict with the initiative, which would spell out in law that a matched signature is sufficient to have the votes inside an envelope counted.
Initiative covers broad ground
But that’s not the only thing in the initiative that the lawsuit by the Free Enterprise Club seeks to keep off the ballot.
Aside from restoration of the permanent early voting list and same-day registration, the initiative would repeal the 2016 law that makes it a crime for individuals to take someone else’s early ballot to a polling place.
For those who do like to vote in person, the initiative would require election officials to do what they can to keep waiting times in lines at polling places to no more than 30 minutes. And anyone who is not an election official could provide food, nonalcoholic beverages and the use of umbrellas or chairs to make those in line comfortable, as long as those offers are not tied to how someone votes.
It also would sharply reduce the amount of money candidates could take from any individual or political action committee, while making more cash available for those who refuse to take outside contributions and instead run for office using public dollars.
This campaign finance provision is what the Arizona Free Enterpise Club is really concerned about. It hits them where they live.
Another provision would raise the minimum state income tax that corporations must pay from $50 a year to $150 for corporations with more than 150 workers.
There’s also a provision designed to keep lawmakers from tinkering with presidential electors. It would say that any changes in how electors are selected must be made by Jan. 1 of the election year, a move that would preclude last-minute efforts like those that occurred after the 2020 election by legislators unhappy with the popular vote.
The Republican state legislators who signed the letter to Vice President Mike Pence asking him not to certify Arizona’s electoral college vote as accomplices to Donald Trump’s Coup Plot would like to be able to steal the 2024 election outright.
If the lawsuit is unsuccessful, both measures would be on the November ballot. And if both were to pass, the one with more votes would take precedence — but only in the areas where the two conflict, meaning that provisions from both could become law.
An initial court hearing is set for this coming week.
Case No. CV2022-009391
Maricopa County Superior Court (Downtown)
Assigned to: Judge Joseph Mikitish
Hearing Date: Friday, Augut 5, at 1:30 p.m.
UPDATE: An evidentiary hearing is now scheduled over several days:
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If the fire department drives by a house, smoking like mad, from the roof and each window, JK would say, “You haven’t provided evidence that their is any fire in that house, you illogical twit.” ” All that smoke? There is No there, THERE.”
Your response is as idiotic as is your claim that the Free Enterprise Club is acting on behalf of the legislature in the lawsuit against the other group’s initiative. The fact that we liked the club’s initiative and referred it to the ballot in no way is evidence that the club is now acting on the legislature’s behalf. Didn’t you ever take a course in logic?
Even more illogical is the suggestion that because the club and the Republican Party share the same lawyer that this somehow links the legislature into some sort of massive conspiracy theory with the club.
This blog desperately needs an editor to keep this type of intellectual garbage off of it’s pages. How embarrassing. In fact, this blog is getting so bad that I may have to stop trolling it.
To paraphrase the Bard, “The Troll doth protest too much, methinks.” Your insistence gives you away.
You need to focus on the issue at hand, which is you’re presenting no evidence for your Yahoo conspiracy theory. I realize that when you have no evidence desperation causes you to try to divert the conversation elsewhere but I think the readings of this blog, or at least some of them, will realize that your argument is shallow.
Relax Rep. Kavanagh. People don’t actually believe that the Free Enterprise Club is doing the lege’s bidding..
On the other hand, maybe the AZ.FEC should issue W2s in the names of certain legislators.
That’s what he is really having a cow over. Investigative reporters may start looking into illegal campaign coordination between a 501(c)(4) and the Arizona Republican Party. As if that has never happened before. His hysteria suggests that reporters should be going over the campaign finance reports.
Again, serious allegations without any facts. Or as they say in Arizona, “All hat and no cattle.” This could only happen in a politically insulated incestuous blog like this one where intelligent people are afraid to say the emperor has no clothes.
“All hat and no cattle”. That’s pretty clever Johnny Boy. In your case Arizonans rightly say “All dick and no head”.
Arizona Rep John Kavanagh has been caught lying on this website over and over again, but wow, he sure is squirming like a bucket of bait on this one.
The connections between people like John Kavanagh and these Koch affiliated groups is well documented.
So no wonder he’s squirming.
You know who doesn’t lie?
That’s right!
RAICESTEXAS dot org!
RAICES provides free or low cost legal help to immigrants.
And for an unlimited time, if you donate In Honor of Arizona Rep John Kavanagh you’ll get double-coupon karma points!
Hooray!
“In fact, this blog is getting so bad that I may have to stop trolling it.”
Don’t stop, John. If anything, troll more.
You provide valuable insight into the wingnut mind, at least for me.
I am not sure I would call AZBLUEMEANIE a wing nut. Although maybe a hypocrite because he attacked me for sponsoring a bill to build more border wall but is hypocritically silent about Biden’s building more border wall to help Kelley.
John Kavanagh goes with a variation of the classic “I’m rubber you’re glue” comeback.
From a grown man.
And as usual, a misleading statement included. I would classify it as the “nah nah nah nah nah” style of debate.
Again, John Kavanagh is an allegedly grown man.
While John Kavanagh operates at the third grade level, you know who takes issues of life and the border seriously?
That’s right!
RAICESTEXAS dot org!
RAICES provides free or low cost legal help to immigrants.
As John Kavanagh has proven time after time, politics is indeed showbiz for ugly people, especially people who are ugly on the inside.
See, kids, this is why John Kavanagh has always gotten a paycheck from the government, in one form or another, his entire life.
No private sector company would put up with someone this inept.
The charge that the Arizona Free Enterprise Club is acting on behalf of the legislature in this lawsuit is a ridiculous and unfounded conspiracy theory. This blog needs an editor or fact checker to filter out these bizarre conspiracy theories. And you criticize people concerned about the sharpies?
Oh, Troll Boy, you all voted to put their “legislatively referred initiative” on the ballot – Republican legislators did their dirty work for them. There is no denying that Republican legislators, including you, put their voter suppression initiative on the ballot. It pays to have friends in high places who can so easily be bought with campaign contributions or the promise of a dark money campaign. Republicans share the same unethical lawyer with the Arizona Free Enterprose Club, the lawyer who participated in Trump’s Coup Plot by bringing frivolous lawsuits to challenge the 2020 election, and he is currently on appeal in the Republican Party’s lawsuit to end early voting in Arizona. It is a fair inference that you are all joined at the hip and there is not a wit of difference among you. It’s a “You scratch my back and I’ll scatch yours” alliance. You can prove me wrong only if the Republican Caucuses in the Arizona legislature issue statements condemning the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and disavowing their anti-democratic lawsuit. We both know that’s never going to happen.
Your arguments do not address the point that your yahoo conspiracy theory is without merit or evidence. The fact that the legislature agreed with the Club and consequently referred their initiative to the ballot in no way is proof that the club is acting on the legislatures behalf in the lawsuit against the initiative. Equally absurd or should I say even more absurd is the argument that because the same lawyer represents the club and the Republican Party that this somehow ties the legislature into your yahoo conspiracy theory. Again, this blog needs an editor or a fact checker to stop the crazy stuff that you’re posting. Certainly an embarrassment to the blog.