Civil & Human Rights

Ken ‘Birther’ Bennett and voter disenfranchisement

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How typical. The Arizona Republic editorializes today that it “has always opposed Prop 200’s voter ID requirements; we would have preferred a court decision tossing them out. But once the Supreme Court upheld them, it became clear the alternative encourages the worst of both worlds for voters.” Proof of citizenship: Let’s live with it.

Screenshot-15And what is this alternative? “Secretary of State Bennett . . .  said he will continue to prepare the dual-track [ballot] system in the event of yet another court decision against Prop 200. Dual-track voter registration is, unquestionably, the worst possible outcome.”

Secretary of State Ken “Birther” Bennett has no legal authority to institute a dual-track ballot system that disenfranchises eligible U.S. citizens of their right to vote in Arizona elections, based solely upon the voter registration form they used to register.

This dual-track system is the brainchild of anti-immigrant activist Kris Kobach, of counsel with the Immigration Law Reform Institute, the legal arm of the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and currently the Secretary of State of Kansas. Kobach is the coauthor of Prop. 200 (2004) and SB 1070 (2010).  The dual-track system was originally discussed in 2004, but it was dropped because it is unconstitutional. Now Kobach and Ken “Birther” Bennett want to test the envelope of constitutional law.

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Tom ‘banned for life by the SEC’ Horne perpetuates the ‘voter fraud’ fraud

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The second most corrupt politician in Arizona, Tom “banned for life by the SEC” Horne, is quoted in the media today commenting on the decision of the U.S. District Court for Kansas, Judge: Ariz. can require voter citizenship:

bullshitjAttorney General Tom Horne, whose office argued the state’s case in Topeka, called Melgren’s decision a victory for election integrity.

“It’s important because voter fraud is a significant problem in Arizona,” he told The Arizona Republic, adding that he believes there “has been what I consider to be a media cover-up of the extent to which voter fraud is a problem in Arizona.”

Seriously? The Arizona Republic last year did an in-depth investigation into Horne’s unfounded allegations of of voter fraud and called bullshit.
Illegal immigrant vote-fraud cases rare in Arizona:

At an August news conference, Horne and Bennett cited voter-fraud concerns as justification for continuing a federal-court fight over state voter-ID requirements.

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An examination of voter-fraud cases in Maricopa County shows those involving illegal immigrants are nearly non-existent, and have been since before the changes to voter-ID requirements were enacted in 2004.

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Hey Doug Ducey, don’t be coy about your health policy advisor!

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It must be true, since the National Journal picked up the press release from the Arizona Democratic Party and published it online.

For Immediate Release: March 18, 2014 Phoenix, AZ-DJ Quinlan, executive director of the Arizona Democratic Party, released the following statement today regarding comments made by former U.S. Congressman,John Shadegg, a top healthcare advisor to Doug Ducey: “Last night during a tele-town hall conducted by gubernatorial candidate Doug Ducey,Ducey’s top healthcare advisor, former U.S. Congressman John Shadegg, called Governor Brewer’s expansion of Medicaid a ‘Ponzi Scheme’ and suggested that we should ‘get rid of Medicaid’ and ‘should not have a single government-run healthcare program, period.’ Government-run healthcare programs that Arizonans rely on today include Medicare, Veterans Administration healthcare, and Medicaid.”

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Clean Elections could not possibly have caused SB1062

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Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com

This FiveThrirtyEight piece has been getting passed around by both opponents of Clean Elections operating in bad faith and by well-meaning people who think it’s legitimate because it’s on Nate Silver’s site.

In 2010, Arizona enacted an immigration law so stringent that the U.S. Supreme Court was forced to intervene. Four years later, the governor had to veto a nearly successful effort to allow businesses to deny service to, among others, LGBT people. After that measure failed, the Arizona House of Representatives last month passed a bill meant to increase scrutiny of abortion clinics.

These bills are coming from lawmakers who’ve assembled the most conservative state legislature in the country. That’s according to Princeton University’s Nolan McCarty and University of Chicago’s Boris Shor, who tracked the ideology of state legislatures over the past 20 years and found that Arizona’s lawmakers are more conservative than those in Georgia, Mississippi and Texas. Modern, tea-party Republicanism has found no more accommodating home than the Arizona statehouse…

…Given all that, why do these hyper-conservative state legislators keep getting elected? Because the Arizona electoral system allows for extreme candidates to compete on an equal playing field with their more moderate competitors.2

Arizona has one of the most advanced clean election laws in the country. As long as a candidate for the state legislature reaches a minimum fundraising level ($1,250), the state essentially funds her campaign.3 (Only Connecticut and Maine have similar laws on public financing for state legislature candidates.) That allows candidates to stay viable even if they don’t have connections to the state party or local business leaders.

This is the perfect formula for the tea party to take on the GOP establishment. Imagine a tea partyer who doesn’t owe anything to established business interests in her district — that’s the kind of state legislator who might support a “religious freedom” law even if businesses are hurt by it. Indeed, a study by Harvard University’s Andrew Hall and a separate study by the University of Denver’s Seth Masket and the University of Illinois’s Michael Miller both show that clean election laws lead to more extreme candidates.

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