MAGA Fascist Bill For A ‘Do Over’ Of Elections They Lose Must Be Vetoed

One of the worst examples of voter disenfranchisement I have ever witnessed occurred in the pivotal state of Ohio in 2004, which went to George W. Bush by a mere 118,000 votes, giving him Ohio’s electoral college votes for the win. Several Factors Contributed to ‘Lost’ Voters in Ohio:

Electoral problems prevented many thousands of Ohioans from voting on Nov. 2. In Columbus, bipartisan estimates say that 5,000 to 15,000 frustrated voters turned away without casting ballots. It is unlikely that such “lost” voters would have changed the election result — Ohio tipped to President Bush by a 118,000-vote margin and cemented his electoral college majority.

But similar problems occurred across the state and fueled protest marches and demands for a recount. The foul-ups appeared particularly acute in Democratic-leaning districts, according to interviews with voters, poll workers, election observers and election board and party officials, as well as an examination of precinct voting patterns in several cities.

In Cleveland, poorly trained poll workers apparently gave faulty instructions to voters that led to the disqualification of thousands of provisional ballots and misdirected several hundred votes to third-party candidates. In Youngstown, 25 electronic machines transferred an unknown number of votes for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to the Bush column.

In Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo, and on college campuses, election officials allocated far too few voting machines to busy precincts, with the result that voters stood on line as long as 10 hours — many leaving without voting. Some longtime voters discovered their registrations had been purged.

“There isn’t enough to prove fraud, but there have been very significant problems in running elections in Ohio this year that demand reform,” said Edward B. Foley, who is director of the election law program at the Ohio State University law school and a former Ohio state solicitor. “We clearly ended up disenfranchising people, and I don’t want to minimize that.”

I have never forgotten a television interview of Black voters in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) who stood in line up to 10 hours in the rain to vote, even after the media consortium had already called the election for George W. Bush. Their unflinching commitment to vote no matter how long it took, even after the media called the race, brought tears to my eyes. I have never been prouder of a group of Americans who would not be denied their franchise to vote.

Nothing which occurred in Arizona in the 2022 election even remotely compares to the voter disenfranchisement which occurred in Ohio in 2004. And yet, MAGA Republicans in the Arizona legislature would have you believe that Arizona’s 2022 election was the worst case of voter disenfranchisement ever. These are white Republicans who don’t have a clue what actual voter disenfranchisement looks like. What they are really upset about is that MAGA extremist candidates at the top of the ballot lost. They genuinely believe that a Republican can never lose an election to a Democrat in Arizona, and if they do, “it must be fraud!” Morons.

Howard Fischer reports, Arizona bill makes election do-overs easier:

State senators voted Tuesday to require new elections any time a certain number of voters claim they were “disenfranchised.”

SB 1695, given preliminary approval on a voice vote, would define that to include any time people signed affidavits they had to wait more than 90 minutes outside a polling place. But as crafted, it may not differentiate between those who couldn’t vote, and those who waited and eventually cast a ballot.

And it wouldn’t take much.

As crafted by [Coup Plotter co-conspirator and fake GQP elector under investigation by the Arizona Attorney General and Special Counsel Jack Smith] Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, just 1,000 sworn affidavits from voters in Maricopa County saying they were disenfranchised [as opposed to would require a judge to order a new election there within 60 days.

And it would take just 250 affidavits from smaller counties to rerun their elections.

What also would trigger a new vote would be if any election official violated any section of the state Election Code or provisions of the Elections Procedures Manual. But the measure does not spell out which violations would count or whether even a minor infraction would toss out the results.

Hoffman said it’s not just what happened in 2022 in Maricopa County with problems with on-site tabulators being unable to read the ballots printed there. The result was long lines, complicated by the fact that officials from the Arizona Republican Party told voters not to return their early ballots in the mail but bring them to polling places, extending the wait times.

“We’ve seen over the last six, eight, 10 cycles a progressive decline in the quality of elections being held in Maricopa County,” he said. But he said that’s just an example.

“There are issues that happen in Pima County, there are issues that have happened in Pinal County now for multiple elections in a row,” Hoffman said. “And it is unfair to the people of this state that county elected officials, county elections officials, can violate the law, repeatedly, and not be held to account.”

The move by lawmakers to establish legal procedures to overturn future elections comes as an organization that helped finance the “fraudit” of the 2020 election amid charges it had been stolen now is trying to help Kari Lake overturn the 2022 gubernatorial vote.

In new filings, Tucson attorney David Hardy is telling the Arizona Supreme Court that the outcome of the election would have been different if lower courts had not agreed to allow “numerous violations of the statutes and procedures” that “have essentially immunized the election from meaningful review.”

He even cited a “late exit poll” conducted by Rasmussen Reports, which has supported conservative causes, that claims that a survey of people who said they voted in November 2022 shows Lake outpolled Hobbs by 8 percentage points.

Seriously, Dude? A Rasmussen poll? This is only evidence of your lack of seriousness. You clearly have no idea WTF you are talking about.

I wrote about how the election-fraud crew in Arizona have decided a wildly sketchy poll from a partisan pollster is more valid than actual election results. https://t.co/kl69SF79yV

— Philip Bump (@pbump) March 17, 2023

“Allowing such an election to stand unreviewed would destroy the public’s confidence in this election and give license to those conducting future elections to manipulate the rules at will,” Hardy said.

He represents a coalition of groups including America’s Future, headed by [Coup Plotter co-conspirator] Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to President Trump. Flynn was found guilty of lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador but was pardoned by Trump in late 2020.

Flynn also said in December 2020 that Trump should impose martial law to overturn the results of the 2020 race that was won by Joe Biden and even deploy the military to “rerun an election” in battleground states — presumably including Arizona — that Trump lost.

America’s Future also donated more than $976,000 in 2021 to Cyber Ninjas. That is the firm with no prior election auditing experience hired by then-Senate President Karen Fann to recount the ballots in the 2020 presidential and U.S. Senate races.

Others in the coalition seeking to overturn the election include Public Advocate of the United States, which pushes for religious conservative policies and has fought against gay rights; the Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund, which opposed the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court; and the U.S. Constitutional Rights Legal Defense Fund. [Read White Christian Nationalists opposed to democracy.]

Hoffman, in pursuing SB 1695, makes some of the claims that candidates cannot get judges to accept their legal arguments and overturn elections.

“Apparently today the courts, the stewards of the law, no longer take the law seriously,” he said. And that, said Hoffman, is why legislators need to intervene and set up an automatic procedure to rerun future elections.

This is why we need judges who demand facts, and evidence, and good faith legal arguments.

The Queen Creek lawmaker was particularly incensed about the wait times which he said exceeded two hours at some polling places. [Remember, the Arizona Republican Party told voters not to return their early ballots in the mail but bring them to polling places, extending the wait times. The GQP manufactured their problem.] And he said that’s even accepting the figures provided by Maricopa County which he said take into account the time from signing in until being able to cast a ballot and not the time outside.

That mirrors Lake’s legal claims that the long lines resulted in voter suppression as some people got discouraged and walked away. And she contends that the majority of those who showed up on Election Day would have voted for her and not Katie Hobbs.

I’m sorry, the Republican Party has been dedicated to voter suppression of low income and minority voters for decades. I have no sympathy for MAGA Republicans who manufactured their own “voter suppression” (long wait times) because of their own “voter fraud” fraudulent conspiracy theories. Vote early by mail like over 80% of Arizona voters and STFU.

Hoffman echoed that claim of suppression, but with a different spin.

“The stuff that happened in Maricopa, honest to God, I could find you examples from the Jim Crow era where in the South they did exactly what was done to day-of voters,” he said. “They did that to Black people in the South.”

And I can find you examples from any Republican state, but particularly from Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Ohio, where Republican voter suppression tactics do this to Black people (and other minoriities, and the poor, and college students, etc.) to this day.

Less clear is exactly what it would take to meet that threshold of allegedly disenfranchised voters to trigger a new election.

As crafted, within five days after the election, a voter would have to submit an affidavit saying he or she waited more than 90 minutes outside “before I could complete and submit my ballot. That verbiage suggests that affidavits even from people who did get to vote would be counted.

If there are a sufficient number of affidavits — 1,000 in Maricopa County and 250 in any other — a judge would order a “special master,” someone certified in election procedures from another county, to go over the affidavits to determine their veracity.

At that point the court would declare it was a “failed election,” bar the supervisors from certifying the vote, and direct them to order a new vote within 60 days, to be run by that special master.

“Wash, rinse, repeat.” No election would ever be final. This process could potentially continue indefinitely. Talk about undermining confidence in elections!

The same result would occur on a finding of a violation of any election law or the Election Procedures Manual, with nothing in the measure spelling out how serious — or how technical — that oversight might be.

Ditto on failure to maintain “chain of custody” of ballots, which is one of the allegations Lake is making in arguing that illegal votes were inserted into the system that far exceeded her 17,117-vote loss to Hobbs.

“It is our job to ensure that there’s confidence, both in the process and in the outcomes,” Hoffman said. He said that doesn’t mean he — or anyone else — will be pleased with the outcome.

“But if we are disenfranchising voters, provably disenfranchising voters, that should not be allowed to stand,” Hoffman said.

Says the Coup Plotter co-conspirator who was a fake GQP elector, and sent a letter to Vice President Pence asking him not to certify the 2020 election. Attorney General Chris Mayes needs to step up the pace of the AG investigation into the fake GQP electors, and indict these traitors already!

Sen. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe, said the legislation is flawed.

“This proposal would allow an arbitrary number of subjective claims, which are most likely misunderstandings of how elections work, to overthrow an election,” he said. “This will only serve to de-legitimize elections.”

Questions about what constitutes disenfranchisement aside, Sen. Priya Sundareshan, D-Tucson, said what Hoffman proposes has logistical problems.

She noted state law sets a deadline for a formal “canvass” of the vote. Sundareshan questioned what would happen if the votes from one or more counties was missing.

That nearly happened last year after Cochise County supervisors balked at certifying the vote there. That led to claims by Hobbs that she would need to proceed with the statewide canvass without the Cochise votes, effectively disenfranchising everyone who cast a ballot in the county.

None of that became necessary after the board, facing a court order, went ahead with the certification.

The measure awaits a final Senate vote before going to the House. If it is approved there it would have to be signed by Hobbs before it could take effect.

The good news is that Governor Hobbs will veto this insane election denier bill. The bad news is that MAGA Fascists are all fucking nuts and this crazy shit is not going away anytime soon.