Just because their pants are in a perpetual state of fire doesn’t mean we should assume everyone else is dishonest

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Arizona political consultant Barrett Marson is not the first conservative to make the strangely candid admission that he could not be trusted with ballots while advocating for SB1339, a striker bill that bans so-called “ballot harvesting” – that is volunteer canvassers collecting mail-in ballots by voters and delivering them to the county recorder. I appreciate the (rare) candor, guys. It’s refreshing, but your slipping up and letting us know what you would do with Democratic voter ballots is not a good reason to disallow collecting ballots, thus cutting voters off from a convenient way of getting their votes counted.

Sen. Don Shooter (R) waded far into bold prevarication territory by changing and wildly exaggerating his apocryphal firsthand account of “voter fraud” in Yuma County. Per Progress Arizona:

Shooter’s most recent distortion occurred on Wednesday when he testified before the House Appropriations Committee that members of several unions collected “5,500 some odd” Permanent Early Voting List requests for early ballots in Yuma during his first run for office, turning them in just before the deadline. Shooter then told committee members that “only 2,000” of those requests were valid. His testimony can be seen here. House Minority Leader Eric Meyer quickly pointed out to Shooter that his anecdote was not germane because his SB1339 criminalizes helping voters turn in early ballots and doesn’t address early ballot requests at all.

Shooter’s story was not only irrelevant, it was also wrong.

Francisco Heredia, executive director of One Arizona, led the 2010 door-to-door GOTV effort in Yuma as then head of Mi Familia Vota. Heredia confirmed that his canvassers turned in about 3,000 Permanent Early Voter List requests not 5,500. And those requests were collected and handed in over the course of several weeks, not all at the last minute. Of those, about 900 or 45 percent, were ultimately invalidated by the Yuma County Recorder, in most cases because the voters were already on the Permanent Early Voter List. They were simply duplicate requests, which are easily caught and corrected by election officials, Heredia said…

…This wasn’t the first time Shooter repeated his tall tale. Earlier this session he told an even taller version. During the February 18 Senate Government hearing on an earlier iteration of Shooter’s bill, he claimed that the 2010 Yuma GOTV effort turned in more than 5,000 VOTES at the deadline, not early ballot requests. Watch here as Sen. Martin Quezada checks Shooter and forces him to admit his story is not true.

Shooter would have gotten away with it were it not for those damn meddling kids and their internet archives! While I fully believe that guys like Marson are just cynically peddling “voter fraud” myths purely to suppress Democratic votes, I also think that guys like Shooter are invested in the belief that liberal activists must be engaging in dishonesty because certain conservatives (like him) are. It’s paranoid projection, which is not a sound basis for policy since the vast majority of people are honest about important civic duties like voting.

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2 thoughts on “Just because their pants are in a perpetual state of fire doesn’t mean we should assume everyone else is dishonest”

  1. We need viable candidates in districts like Shooter’s and then we need to send GOTV volunteers to knock on doors.
    We really don’t have to live like this, but it will take an amazing amount of human endeavor to overcome the Republican lock on the legislature.

    School funding might be the issue to hang a hat on.

  2. Why do you think they care? This is what they care about hispanic voting and suppressing it. Terry goddard keeps e-mailing me about DARK MONEY! And what a threat it is to rich old white democrats ego trip when they want to run for office. 70% of white people in arizona vote republican in off year elections a little less in presidential elections. Dark money is a threat to terry or fred duval spending ad money telling white republicans to stop hating them and vote for them. Our two latino congressmen don’t fear dark money as their voters hate republicans. They give lip service in support of the anti-dark money crusade to please white democrat party hacks. The solution to dark money and every thing else is registering the hispanics like randy parraz is doing not waisting money trying to get republicans to vote for rich old white democrats on their ego trips. If you disagree explain how diane douglas won being out spent ten to one and she hardly campaigned!

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