Arizona has a well-deserved reputation as “The Meth Lab of Democracy” (h/t Jon Stewart) – more accurately, “Anti-Democracy” – because of the certifiably crazy Republicans serving in Arizona government. Remember, you can’t spell “crazy” withouth the (R-AZ).
Arizona was ground zero for the election deniers’ Big Lie conspiracy theories which led to the January 6, 2021 MAGA/QAnon violent seditious insurrection in Washington, D.C., and the Arizona Senate’s GQP sham “fraudit” of Maricopa County ballots by a QAnon conspiracy theorist, universally discredited by actual election experts. This slow-motion insurrection is ongoing, with over 100 election denier Big Lie voter suppression bills introduced in the GQP-controlled Arizona legislature.
This has drawn the attention of the national news media as sort of Looky-Loos craning their necks to get a better look at a horrific car crash with fatalities as they drive by.
Fernando Santo writes at the Washington Post, Arizona Republicans keep churning out new election legislation targeting voting access:
The election-related bills kept coming, most of them aimed squarely at restricting voting access. The files clogged the desk of Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly — 141 by early last week, she said, or almost 10 percent of all bills filed in the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature so far this year.
A big part of Cázares-Kelly’s job is to administer elections. That means she has to be on top of every proposed change and, when warranted, articulate her position to lawmakers, whose job, in theory, is to represent the interests of the people of the state.
Until 2018, the number of legislative proposals about elections and voting hovered around 50 per year, Cázares-Kelly, a Democrat, told me. By 2021, Arizona ranked third in the country for the number of restrictive bills introduced, an increase no doubt fueled by former president Donald Trump’s dishonest diatribes about a stolen election and his resounding loss in a state no Democratic presidential nominee had won since Bill Clinton in 1996.
Some weeks ago, Cázares-Kelly hired two part-time workers to help her track this year’s bills. She’s still trying to catch up.
“Part of the tactic is the overwhelming of the system,” Cázares-Kelly told me. [Insurrectionist Steve Bannon: “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”] And the goal, she said, “is to try to exclude our most marginalized community members, who are often times Black, Indigenous and people of color; the working class and the working poor; people with disabilities.” [i.e., voter suppression.]
In other words, it’s about controlling whose voices are heard and whose interests are represented through the ballot box.
Arizona hasn’t yet shed its reputation as a place of exclusion and racism, even if in its largest cities, Phoenix and Tucson, White people are now in the minority. There’s a systematic attempt to keep communities of color — the new majority — as outsiders through policies that seek to undermine their chances of reaching higher and occupying a space in society that measures up to their numbers.
Careful with that systemic racism stuff, Fernando, the GQP white Christian Nationalists in the Arizona legislature will want to prosecute you for Critical Race Theory.
Examples include a voter-approved proposition that barred undocumented immigrants from paying less expensive in-state tuition that is still on the books nearly 16 years after its passage. (A ballot question this year could change that, but its passage is not a sure bet.) And authorities can still hold suspects in jail until their immigration status has been checked, one of the few provisions of the infamous “show me your papers” law of 2010 that the U.S. Supreme Court left in place in a ruling a decade ago.
Arizona also often scores badly in matters such as educational attainment, per-pupil spending and covid-19 deaths, but at least its election system [was] something of a national model. The state pioneered online voter registration, allowed voters who signed up for it to automatically receive ballots by mail and offered voter-registration opportunities at its department of motor vehicles before the federal government made it a requirement.
“To see efforts to dismantle key aspects of our long-standing and effective election system, in pursuit of baseless conspiracies, is frustrating and disappointing,” Bo Dul, a former state elections director, told me. She is now general counsel for the Arizona secretary of state, Democrat Katie Hobbs.
In the House, those efforts include H.B. 2577, one of at least 37 similar bills in eight states this year that seek to impose new or more stringent requirements for in-person voting, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.. In Arizona, that would mean presenting an ID card issued only to voters who can show a birth certificate, passport or naturalization document when applying. Driver’s licenses and tribal membership cards would no longer be acceptable forms of identification.
In the Senate, there’s S.B. 1058, which would prohibit drive-up voting and the use of ballot drop boxes outside polling places, voting centers or election and county recorder’s offices. S.B. 1571 would permit the use of ballot drop boxes, but only if they are outfitted with 24-hour photo or video cameras, an onerous requirement in the remote rural and tribal lands of Arizona, where Internet connectivity is practically nonexistent and exactly where these boxes are needed most.
Cázares-Kelly knows about that firsthand. She grew up on the western edge of the Tohono O’odham Nation, southwest of Tucson, in a small community nearly an hour by car from the closest post office and grocery store. Before she became the first Native American elected to countywide office in Pima County, she worked to increase civic engagement among the Tohono O’odham, whose ancestral land extends into Mexico and whose reservation includes 62 miles of the southern border, where Trump once planned to build a wall.
Through her experiences, Cázares-Kelly has seen a “disparity of needs,” she said. “Who is getting help, and who is not? Who is thriving, and who is living on the edge? All of these challenges that have been magnified by the pandemic.”
You might think legislators should be focused on addressing these problems and not trying to use antidemocratic tactics to cling to office. Yet, this is where we are, at 141 bills and counting.
NPR reports, Arizona Republicans continue pushing voting restrictions, risking backfire:
By last count at the Arizona State Capitol, close to over a hundred voting bills have been introduced, part of a nationwide push by far-right Republican-controlled legislatures to pass restrictive voting laws.
The swing state of Arizona is front and center — home to 10% of all the proposed legislation — despite two reviews showing no problems with the 2020 presidential election. One of those, done by the Florida firm Cyber Ninjas, actually handed more votes to President Biden, who narrowly won Arizona.
Critics of the so-called voter reform push see it as part of a slide toward authoritarianism.
[A] couple of the most controversial — and extreme — measures appear to be stalled out for now, including HB 2596, that could have, among other things, allowed this legislature to move to reject the results of an election it didn’t like. Another would have ended most early and mail in voting — Arizona was among the first states to adopt vote by mail some three decades ago.
“The fact that our elected officials in this country could even be introducing bills that so thoroughly undermine our democracy sends a really bad message,” says Sean Morales-Doyle, acting director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, which has analyzed every voting rights bill introduced in state legislatures since 2011.
Their study, published in January, found 39% more restrictive voting bills this year over the same time last year.
Going “back to 1958”?
Morales-Doyle doesn’t expect many of the most extreme bills to go far in Arizona or other states. But analysts are worried that their very mention and news coverage of them could lead to further distrust in the electoral system among the general public.
“All of this rhetoric, as it continues to grow and fester, I think, is sort of laying the groundwork for future attacks on our democracy,” he says.
During a recent debate on his bill to require all voting to be done on election day in a voter’s precinct only, Rep. Fillmore said he wanted to bring voting back to how it was in 1958.
That didn’t land well.
Arizona has a fraught history of Jim Crow laws. Today, Republicans hold just a slim majority in the legislature and Arizona’s population is getting more diverse thanks to in-migration from states like California.
For his part, Fillmore says Democrats are trying to misconstrue what he said, when he really just wants voting to get back to its basics.
“What I was referring to was back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, you had voting in the precinct, with government identification,” he says. “You had counting done in the precinct reported that day and that night.”
Yeah, sure that’s what you meant. The 1950’s, that magical time when the American Apartheid of Jim Crow racial segregation still reigned supreme and Blacks and other minorities were systematically excluded from voting, and excluded from public transportation and accommodations, and were denied service at white owned businesses, and were beaten or lynched if they dared to enter. The only people who romanticize the 1950’s as a perfect time in American history are white people, because for everyone else it was an oppressive hell.
Civil rights groups liken the comment to a “dog whistle”
A couple miles east of the state capitol is the office of the Arizona Informant, a Black-owned newspaper published by Cloves Campbell Jr.
“You can say that you didn’t mean it, but you said it,” he told NPR, in reference to the 1958 comment. “I think that to a certain extent a lot of people feel that they want to go back to the quote un-quote good old days for them, that wasn’t good ole days for everyone.”
Campbell also served in the state legislature, from 2007-2011. So did his father, who became Arizona’s first Black state senator in 1966. Campbell Jr. says the Arizona bills go totally against democracy, which the U.S., he notes, preaches and tries to set up all around the world.
“When they won an election, the election was fine, but when they started losing elections, all of a sudden, there’s a problem with the process,” he says. “There’s not a problem with the process, it may just be a problem with you the individual, that people are voting for, they just don’t like you.“
A few Republicans are standing up in opposition
At this point, only a handful of Arizona Republicans are speaking out against the rash of bills that seem to suggest the 2020 election here was fraudulent.
“I guess what troubles me the most is it’s not true,” says Paul Boyer, a state senator who represents a swing district in the suburbs north of Phoenix.
Boyer has been joining with Democrats to block some of the bills. During a break in a recent floor debate, he said many of them are grounded in conspiracy theory.
“Everything is viewed through the lens, that, well, the election is stolen so therefore we need X, Y or Z bill and that’ll fix everything,” Boyer says.
Last year when Boyer refused to join Republicans who were trying to seize voting records from Maricopa County, party activists tried to recall him. He was also threatened and briefly had police security at his home. Today, Boyer says he’s disturbed by the GOP’s move toward populism authoritarianism, deficit spending and a cult of personality with Donald Trump.
“Those three things don’t lead to longevity for any party,” Boyer says. “And especially for a guy who’s been a Republican for all of five years, now he gets to determine who the real Republicans are.”
Are everyday voters paying attention in Arizona?
Arizonans may be more concerned with efforts to change voting laws than the future of the GOP. Even in traditionally Republican — and wealthy — strongholds like Scottsdale, there are signs recently of Arizona’s shift from ruby red to purple.
“We as people have a right to vote, we have a right to voice our opinions, our concerns,” says Eric Fernandez, who was spending part of the recent President’s Day holiday at an outdoor mall with his young family.
Fernandez relocated here last year from Los Angeles.
“This is my new home, my family loves it here,” he says. “So to see this restrictive approach taken I think challenges our ability to enjoy what we’ve found in this state.”
Arizona went blue in the last presidential election for the first time since 1996. And it’s possible these Arizona voting bills could backfire on Republicans in the long run, not the least of which because many Republicans have historically liked the convenience of voting early or by mail.
Boyer won’t be sticking around to find out. He’s decided not to run again. And while he’s one of the lone voices in the GOP in the statehouse speaking out against the “Big Lie,” Boyer still says he voted for Trump in 2020.
“And I would do it again,” he told NPR. [Even after Trump incited a violent seditious insurrection against the U.S. government on January 6, 2021 to overthrow American democracy. “But other than that …” What a fucking loser.] “I am more concerned about what he’s done after he’s been out of office than while he was in office. I think he did a lot of good things when he was in office.”
Boyer doesn’t regret his 2020 vote because in particular he liked the former president’s economic and foreign policies.
Like sucking up to authoritarian dictators, like his pal Putin that the world is now at war with? Again, what a fucking loser. Good riddance to you.
Arizona PBS reported, “Arizona Senate kills 14 bills”, https://azpbs.org/horizon/2022/03/arizona-senate-kills-14-bills/?link_id=20&can_id=1178826d9492bd11f3e56773f42e3e77&source=email-arizona-labor-dispatch-vol-1-issue-8&email_referrer=email_1481069&email_subject=arizona-labor-dispatch-vol-1-issue-9
14 Republican bills died in the state senate, with Republican Sen. Paul Boyer joining the democratic congress against 12 of them.
The bills were all focused on election reform, but Boyer said each of the 12 bills that he rejected had its own issues.
“There are problems with every single bill that I voted no on,” he said
Problems ranged from being “unworkable” for election officials, to being “duplicative,” or “repetitive or redundant,” Boyer said.
One bill would have prevented the use of sharpies on election ballots, a concern that Boyer described as “debunked.”
“It’s one of those bills where it might look like you’re supporting election integrity, where you can stand up at your district meeting and tell the PCs that you’re banning sharpies,” Boyer said, “but it doesn’t do anything.”
Other bills included one that would give the Attorney General and county attorneys subpoena powers without probable cause, one making misplacing election ballots into a misdemeanor, and one to give election workers unique passwords to log into voting machines.
Boyer was the only Republican who voted against these bills, drawing the ire of fellow party members.
“They’re not very happy with me right now,” Boyer said.
The AP reports “Arizona Senate votes down bill to audit every election”, https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-elections-arizona-donald-trump-phoenix-036022d8e1daec9906a50950ffa057e6
The Arizona Senate on Wednesday voted down a plan to require the state auditor general to conduct an exhaustive review following every election.
It was one of four election bills that failed on Wednesday because they had insufficient support from Republicans, and Democrats were united in opposition. Three others were killed on Monday as the Legislature culls the dozens of election bills Republicans introduced this year, many in response former President Donald Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories claiming the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud.
The bill would have essentially made the Senate Republicans’ 2020 election review a permanent fixture following elections, but would have put it in the hands of a respected government agency. [Literally fucking insane.]
Election denier and Big Lie advocate Sen. Sonny Borrelli, a Republican from Lake Havasu City, [was angry] as it became clear the bill would fail. “Our citizens [he means the GQP crazy base] demand it. They’re entitled to it. The elections belong to them, not to us.”
The measure failed when all 14 Democrats and two Republicans voted against it, Sens. Paul Boyer of Glendale and Michelle Ugenti-Rita of Scottsdale. Both have been publicly critical of their party’s election review, which they said was flawed and incompetent.
Boyer said the bill would saddle the auditor general with an expensive, unnecessary task and could potentially detract from its existing duties of auditing government agencies.
The bill also would have required the public release of ballot images stored by the machines that count them and made changes to the procedures for keeping voter registration rolls up to date.
Boyer and Ugenti-Rita also joined Democrats to defeat a separate bill making ballot images public records, which Ugenti-Rita said was duplicative of other legislation and would cause confusion. Other bills that failed include measures addressing the maintenance of voter rolls and the security of ballot machines.
Lawmakers did vote nearly unanimously to create a system allowing early voters to track the status of their ballot. Such a system already exists in Maricopa and Pima counties but is not available statewide. A bill making it easier for visually impaired votes to cast a mail ballot also passed without opposition.
Note to the AP: Where are references to the bill numbers and a link to the bill? I have to agree with Mark Joseph Stern at Slate on this one, https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1501593666200256517
Journalists are still writing entire articles summarizing a piece of legislation without linking to the text or even providing a bill number, and it’s just like … What the hell is wrong with you? How could you possibly think that’s an acceptable practice in 2022? It’s depraved!
The Arizona Mirror reports, “GOP bills to restrict some voter registrations clear Senate committee”, https://www.azmirror.com/2022/03/08/gop-bills-to-restrict-some-voter-registrations-clear-senate-committee/
Senate Republicans on Monday advanced bills on voter registration that critics say will discourage some younger people — particularly college students — from registering to vote.
On Monday afternoon, the Senate Government Committee considered bills from the lower chamber. One bill would ban same-day voter registration — something that doesn’t exist in Arizona. Instead, residents must fill out a registration form 29 days before an election occurs to be eligible to cast their votes in that election. Only 20 states and the District of Columbia allow same-day registration.
The measure, House Bill 2237, is an attempt to preempt any future attempts to allow same-day registration. (Of course, any future legislature that wished to enact same-day registration would simply be able to repeal the law banning it).
Government Committee Chairwoman [QAnon Queen] Kelly Townsend said banning same-day registration was needed to reduce fraud, something she speculated was already happening with provisional ballots. The Apache Junction Republican is an ardent proponent of the Big Lie, the false belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump by fraudulent voting. There is no evidence that Joe Biden won because of fraud, and a partisan review of the election in Maricopa County found no proof that the election results were inaccurate.
“If somebody were to vote who wasn’t registered and took a provisional ballot, are they able to circumvent the voter registration process?” she asked.
Provisional ballots are given to voters who show up at the wrong polling place, or whose eligibility to vote is unclear because they can’t provide the proper identification. These ballots are kept separate from standard ballots until the end of the election, when determinations are made on whether or not to count it.
Townsend said she had been told this was an easy way for fraudulent voters to bypass safeguards, but Jen Marson, the executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, said that is entirely unfounded. Townsend’s committee staff explained to the panel that voters without proper ID at the polls may be given a provisional ballot, but would need to verify their ID later at a county recorder’s office. If they can’t do so, the ballot is thrown out. An incomplete or nonexistent voter registration would also warrant a rejected provisional ballot.
Yet the bill was passed by a narrow margin, 4-3 along party lines. Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, who had stepped outside the committee room, was ushered back into the room when the bill was up for a vote to ensure it passed. Shortly after the vote, he left again.
Also shepherded through the committee was House Bill 2243, which adds a statement to a voter registration form that notifies the registrant that, if they permanently move to another state, their registration will be canceled. It doesn’t specify what amount of time is considered permanent.
Under current law, voter registration addresses are verified by May 1 in preparation for an upcoming general or primary election. If a voter has moved within the county, their registration is updated and a letter is sent to the voter requesting address verification. If a county recorder receives a written notice of address change outside of the county, then that registration is canceled. A person must be a resident of Arizona for at least 29 days before an election to be eligible to vote in it, and residency, for registration purposes, is defined as someone with a physical presence in the state or someone who has an intent to return to the state if they are temporarily absent.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, said the statement prevents lawsuits because voters must recognize and authorize the state’s right to remove them from the voter rolls if they move.
“What this does is adds a statement to the voter registration form that simply says, ‘I as a voter that am choosing to register, if I move permanently out of state — yes, you have the ability to follow the existing law and remove me from the rolls,’” he said.
Previously, House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding brought up concerns with the bill during a hearing in a House Government and Elections Committee on Jan. 26. He worried that it would affect college students attending out-of-state universities and seasonal workers. Rep. Lorenzo Sierra, D-Avondale, echoed Bolding at the same hearing, saying he was worried it would prevent his son from voting if he was accepted for a doctoral program out of state.
“I fear he goes and he’s accepted into some school somewhere out of Arizona, comes back in November to cast his vote somewhere and isn’t allowed to because he got kicked off the rolls. And because we don’t have same-day voter registration, (he) isn’t allowed to vote,” he said.
The bill hasn’t been amended since then, and was passed by the Senate Government Committee on Monday with a one-vote difference. Mesnard, with a phone tucked against his ear, was again summoned to the hearing room to vote, and he shouted his approval as he quickly cast his vote. Both bills move next to consideration by the full Senate, closer towards becoming law.
The Associated Press reports, “Senate OKs several election law changes, but 3 fail”, https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-elections-arizona-election-2020-9261ec1b89e51fa5b97a686ed4099468
The Arizona Senate on Monday approved several revisions to the state’s election laws but three were rejected when majority Republicans failed to muster the needed 16 votes.
The rejection of the three bills is a sign that many of dozens of Republican-sponsored election law changes set for Senate votes in the coming days are likely to face trouble getting past at least one GOP senator.
Republican Sen. Paul Boyer said before the vote that he has trouble with many of the bills, and his was the key vote in blocking those that failed Monday.
“I’m a firm no – if it’s bad policy I’m not horse trading,” he told The Associated Press.
One no vote from a GOP senator marks the end for any bill that can’t garner Democratic support in the chamber where Republicans hold just a one-vote majority. And minority Democrats are universally opposed to scores of election law revisions that GOP legislators are pushing this year.
The bills that got Boyer’s backing on Monday were relatively tame — one makes it a felony to help someone from outside Arizona register to vote, another requires the Legislature’s non-partisan legal team to review the manual that guides election workers, and a third requires courts to send monthly reports of people convicted of felonies and who are no longer eligible to vote to election officials.
The ones that failed drew concerns from Boyer — and his no votes — were what he called bad policy that needlessly makes election work more difficult or what he called overreach.
He joined with Democrats and one other Republican to reject a bill that would have required counties that operate vote centers rather that precinct-based voting sites to separate ballots by precinct so a hand-count audit can be performed. He also voted against legislation that forbid election officials from requiring the use of a certain pens, which was designed to remedy the debunked [Sharpiegate] conspiracy theory that ink from felt-tipped “sharpies” bled through to the back side of ballots.
Those votes drew the ire of [the QAnon Queen] Republican Sen. Kelly Townsend of Apache Junction, a Trump supporter who has shepherded a host of election bills through the Senate Government Committee she chairs. She also is sponsoring many of this year’s Senate election bills.
She was particularly upset after Boyer rejected a bill that expanded GOP Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s power by allowing him to investigate election issues for federal office, including Congress and presidential electors, and give him nearly unlimited subpoena power. The bill was requested and written by Brnovich’s office and also allows county prosecutors to investigate problems with federal office elections.
[The Florida Senate passed a voting law package on Friday that was pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and would create a police force dedicated to pursuing election crimes. The bill would create an Office of Election Crimes and Security under the Department of State to review fraud allegations and conduct preliminary investigations. The governor would be required to appoint a group of special officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who would be dedicated to pursuing the election law violations.
“If you have issues with the sponsor, I would ask you to reconsider your purpose for voting no,” she said. “Having not come to me, having not understood, you are voting no on the attorney general’s bill.” Democrats argued that the measure is meant to satisfy a wing of the Republican Party that believes the 2020 presidential vote was fraudulent. Critics said the measure is unnecessary since local prosecutors can handle fraud cases. “Fla. lawmakers approve an elections police force, the first of its kind in the U.S.”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/09/florida-lawmakers-approve-an-elections-police-force-first-its-kind-us/Taking “model legislation” from Florida is simply insane.]
After staying silent when Townsend previously noted his lack of support, Boyer explained his vote on that bill, noting it raised issues of conflict with federal laws and gave the attorney power to demand documents and require testimony without showing any probable cause.
“The state attorney general doesn’t have authority over federally election officials. It’s for a reason.” Boyer said. “This is a massive power shift to the county attorneys and the attorney general.”
-Just this once, I will give him some credit on this one.