Now The AZ GQP Wants To Do Away With The Sanctity Of The Secret Ballot?

Every voter who casts a ballot would have their name and address published online by election officials under a proposal being backed by Republican legislators.

The secretary of state would also have to say whether each voter cast their ballot early [the AZ GQP is currently suing to declare its own early voting laws unconstitutional] or in person on Election Day.

The bill would also require all ballot images to be published, along with a way to link those ballot images to the post-election publication of voters names.

Wait, so now the AZ GQP wants to do away with the sanctity of the secret ballot? So the Party of The Mob can threaten, coerce and intimidate voters who do not vote the “right way,” i.e., vote for authoritarian  Republicans? Oh hell no!

This election denier bill is the brainchild of former Secretary of State Ken “Birther” Benett, and our Troll Boy, Rep. John Kavanagh.

The Arizona Mirror reports, Every voter’s name, address and ballot would be published online after every election under GOP proposal:

The measure is one of a host of conservative responses to the false idea that rampant voter fraud occurred in the 2020 election. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. John Kavanagh, said its intent is to increase transparency.

“Nothing like a little bit of sunshine to allay people’s concerns that things are not being totally above board,” Kavanagh told the Senate Government Committee Monday.

Yuck it up, Chucklehead.

The Fountain Hills Republican said he developed House Bill 2780 with former Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who served as the Senate’s liaison for the sham “fraudit” last year. Bennett claimed that work alerted him to weaknesses in the system that have led to a lack of [MAGA/QAnon cult members’] confidence in elections.

“Our elections need to be transparent, trackable and publicly verifiable,” Bennett said on Monday.

This should not mean that we do away with the sanctity of the secret ballot.

Republicans in Arizona and in state legislatures across the nation are pushing hundreds of measures to add barriers to voting and to make it easier for them to overturn results they don’t like, often under the guise of stopping the exceedingly rare election fraud that they falsely claim is the reason why Democrats won close races in 2018 and 2020.

Former President Donald Trump has loudly and falsely asserted that his 2020 loss was due to rampant fraud, though numerous election audits and examinations across the country have failed to turn up any evidence.

Under Kavanagh’s bill, county recorders would be required to post a list of the names and addresses of all eligible voters on the county’s website 10 days before primary and general elections. That list would include both active and inactive voters.

When the bill was approved last month by the full House of Representatives, county election officials would have also been required to publish the names, addresses and method of voting for every voter who cast a ballot after every election. But Republicans on the Senate Government Committee amended the bill to shift that responsibility to the secretary of state, who would publish that information for all Arizona voters after each election.

The bill would also require all ballot images to be published, along with a way to link those ballot images to the post-election publication of voters names.

Note: How the Secret Ballot Ended the Gilded Age… (excerpt):

Beginning in the 1830s, the iconic symbol of democracy (see image above) was the transparent, glass globe, ballot box. But, in the late 1800s with partisanship, campaign finance and inequality soaring to all-time highs, the United States began to roll out the secret ballot. The intentions were clear. Proponents like John Stuart Mill claimed the secrecy of the ballot would curb the power of intimidating landlords and the rampant vote-buying funded by the wealthy.

Now embraced as a ‘cornerstone of modern democracy,’ the secret ballot brought an immediate reduction to election violence, intimidation and bribery. It also curtailed the Robber Barons’ vice-grip control over elections and diminished their hold on the democratic process. By curbing the government capture of the Gilded Age, the secret ballot opened the door for the Progressive Era. And despite the paucity of press on this topic, one thing is for sure, few other compelling reasons for this transition are offered. And the correlations and rationale that link the demise of inequality and corporate power to the simple introduction of voter secrecy are precise. And we expect, today, that reinstating congressional secrecy would have the same chilling effect on corruption.

Currently, ballots undergo a complex multi-step process to be counted and verified which includes everything from public live streaming to individual barcodes for personal and official tracking. [This is all the transparency and security which is necessary.]

There is no identifying information on ballots that would indicate which individual voters cast them.

This would change with a way to link those ballot images to the post-election publication of voters names.

Jen Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, said that posting ballots online, as the bill’s original language indicated, could [also] put election officials at risk of lawsuits because their content isn’t being redacted.

“You would be surprised what people write on their ballots,” she said.

There’s also no protection from people using the documents to accuse the counties of malfeasance, Marson said. The bill instructs county recorders to provide an identifying indicator for each ballot image to check against the actual vote record and confirm the tabulation results by ballot batch. That means anyone could potentially download an image, alter it and claim that the counties purposely miscounted it.

A new means for the MAGA/QAnon cult to allege “voter fraud” by committing forgery and fraud, just like they did with their fake GQP electors.

The Senate Government committee approved the bill on a 4-2 party-line vote. Its next stop is the Senate floor, where it will be considered by the full chamber.

Contact your state senator and tell him or her to kill this bill – preserve the secret ballot! Will Senators Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, and Paul Boyer, R-Glendale step up once again to defeat this bill? (With the Senate amendment, the bill would have to go back to the House should the Senate pass it. Contact your House members as well.)