Ted Simons of Arizona Horizon (PBS) moderates an “informal” debate for Arizona’s Citizens Clean Elections for the pro-democracy Democratic candidates for Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, the former County Recorder for Maricopa County, and Rep. Reginald Bolding, the current Democratic house minority leader. The video is at the link below, I cannot embed it in the post.
2022 Debates: Democratic candidates for Arizona Secretary of State:
Tonight’s debate features the democratic candidates for Arizona Secretary of State. This is not a formal debate, it’s an open exchange of ideas, an opportunity for give and take between candidates. Interjections and even interruptions are allowed, provided that all sides get a fair shake.
What improvements would you bring in the office of Secretary of State?
Bolding: “So what I’m going to use is my experience as an educator, to make sure that every single classroom that has high school students that are ready for graduation, that they have the ability to get registered to vote upon graduation if they want to.”
Fontes: “We’ve got to make sure that we have an election training manual that is approachable by the general public so we can all see what the rules of the game are for the administration of elections in Arizona… We’ve also got to improve information technology and security systems.”
What other improvements are needed or is the Secretary of State office fine the way it is now?
Bolding: “For everyday Arizonans, the [election] system is much too difficult for them and we need to make it a simple easy click for them to actually go through that process.”
Fontes: “We need to use the infrastructures that exist, like our public library systems all over the state. These are critically important to the function of a free and fair democracy.”
Does Arizona’s election process need reforming?
Bolding: “We know our vote by mail process is one of the strongest in the nation. We have been voting by mail for over 30 years, and what we’ve seen from this last election cycle, is that people for partisan gain have decided to say that our system is not working… Any system needs reforming. If you’re not trying to improve your system every single day then you’re not trying to do what’s in the best interest of Arizona.”
Fontes: “I think that’s right. But the reforms have to be listed out for folks to understand. We need to have vote centers across the entire state so anyone can vote anywhere. We need to have valid tracking system like we implemented in Maricopa County. So that if you vote by mail for example, you get a text message when your ballot is being mailed to you and when it gets returned to the election department, improving confidence folks have that their ballot will be counted.”
I am not impressed with the questions. Ted Simons is treating this debate as if this is a “normal” election as in years past. Meh, milquetoast. This is not a normal election, Ted!
This is the first election after Republicans engaged in a violent seditious insurrection to overturn the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021, and it is a massive seditious conspiracy in the Republican Party from Donald Trump and his inner circle at the top, on down to 147 Republican lawmakers who still objected to the election results even after the Capitol attack, and on down to a large number of Republican state legislators around the country, in particular here in Arizona which was ground zero for Trump’s bogus “stop the steal” Big Lie.
BREAKING: 186 Legislators from 39 States Write a Letter to the American People Calling for a 50-State Audit, Decertification Where Appropriate, and Possible Convening of the US House of Representatives (1/2) pic.twitter.com/syGpDm5fN9
— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) November 23, 2021
The Republican candidates running for Secretary of State are MAGA/QAnon election deniers who regularly promote Trump’s Big Lie, and they are pledging to help Donald Trump steal the 2024 election (eletion subversion) if he runs again: Rep. Mark Finchem, Rep. Shawnna Bolick, and Beau Lane; and then there’s the GQP’s longtime Queen of Voter Suppression, Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita.
The Guardian reports, ‘This should terrify the nation’: the Trump ally seeking to run Arizona’s elections (excerpt):
Until Donald Trump’s endorsement, Rep. Mark Finchem, like the relatively obscure position for which he is now standing, was scarcely known outside politically informed Arizona circles. Today he is a celebrity on the “Save America” circuit, one of a coterie of local politicians who have been thrown into the national spotlight by Trump as he lays the foundations for a possible ground attack on democracy in the 2024 presidential election.
The role of secretary of state is critical to the smooth workings and integrity of elections in many states, Arizona included. The post holder is the chief election officer, with powers to certify election results, vet the legal status of candidates and approve infrastructure such as voting machines.
In short, they are in charge of conducting and counting the vote.
About three weeks after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election – and on the same day that Joe Biden’s 10,457-vote victory in Arizona was certified – Finchem hosted Rudy Giuliani at a downtown Phoenix hotel. Giuliani, then Trump’s personal lawyer, announced a new theory for why the result should be overturned: that Biden had relied on fraudulent votes from among the 5 million undocumented immigrants living in the state – a striking number given that Arizona only has a total of 7 million residents.
Two weeks after that, Finchem was among 30 Republican lawmakers in Arizona who signed a joint resolution. It called on Congress to block the state’s 11 electoral college votes for Biden and instead accept [see signatures, Finchem and Bolick signed] “the alternate 11 electoral votes for Donald J Trump”.
This was part of Trump’s Coup Plot devised by attorney John Eastman to create competing slates of “fake GQP electors” to throw the election into the House of Representatives where Trump would win because there are more Republican controlled states, and each state only gets one vote. All 30 Republican lawmakers in Arizona who signed this joint resolution are thus co-conspirators in Trump’s Coup Plot and aided and abetted his Coup Plot.
All 30 Republican lawmakers in Arizona who signed this joint resolution should be removed from office under 18 U.S. Code § 2383 – Rebellion or insurrection, 18 U.S. Code § 2384 – Seditious conspiracy, and section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
If we did not have a partisan hack Republican Attorney General engaged in a criminal coverup to protect these seditious Republican state legislators, the two groups of “fake GQP electors” and the 30 Republican legislators who were co-conspirators in this seditous insurrection would have all been charged and prosecuted by now. Jesus Christ, they even put it into writing and signed their names to this Coup Plot!
Finchem was present in Washington on 6 January 2021, the day that hundreds of angry Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, resulting in the deaths of five people with 140 police officers injured. He had come to speak at a planned “Stop the Steal” rally, later cancelled, to spread the “big lie” that the election had been rigged.
Communications between Finchem and the organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally earned the lawmaker a knock on the door from the January 6 committee. The powerful congressional investigation into the insurrection issued a subpoena for him to appear before the panel and to hand over documents relating to the effort to subvert democracy.
Finchem will have to answer to the committee for what he did in the wake of the 2020 election, or face legal consequences. But there’s a more disconcerting question thrown up by his candidacy for secretary of state: were he to win the position, would he be willing and able to overturn the result of the 2024 presidential election in Arizona, potentially paving the way for a political coup?
“Someone who wants to dismantle, disrupt and completely destroy democracy is running to be our state’s top election officer,” said Reginald Bolding, the Democratic minority leader in the Arizona House who is running against Finchem in the secretary of state race. “That should terrify not just Arizona, but the entire nation.”
So no, I do not think that the affable Ted Simons is up to the job of moderating debates this year. It is going to take a hard-nosed prosecuting attorney to handle candidate debates this year with the large number of seditous insurrectionist Republicans running for office who are committed to the Big Lie and destroying American democracy. This point needs to be demonstrated and driven home to voters.
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What’s wrong with asking questions, double checking? It’s was ok for Clinton and the Dems to do it in 2016, but not ok for the replubicans in 2020? Why the double standards? I hope everyone asks questions of both parties.
Clinton conceded. She lost. She gave a concession speech and called your boy like a big girl.
No one stormed the capital or had a little boy tantrum.
And Obama left gracefully.
So I’m not sure what your point is J. Lyle.
Asking questions is fine. Accusing others of crimes with zero evidence isn’t asking questions, it’s falsely accusing people.
You cult members are so tiresome and boring.
The Michigan Republican Party at its convention on Saturday endorsed Kristina Karamo, a first-time candidate ans election denier who has spread lies about the 2020 election, to run all the state’s elections as the party’s candidate for secretary of state. “Republicans Have Picked An Election Denier To Run Michigan’s Elections”, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahmimms/karmao-michigan-secretary-of-state-election-denial
Karamo is one of at least 17 election deniers running this year to take over elections in 14 states, three of whom have the explicit backing of former president Donald Trump [including Rep. Mark Finchem (R-AZ.)]
Karamo will attempt to unseat Democratic incumbent Jocelyn Benson, who has spent the last two years combatting disinformation about 2020 as secretary of state. Benson has compared the possibility of voters handing control of Michigan’s elections over to Karamo to “putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department.”