Rep. John Fillmore’s Election Subversion Bill Killed By The House Speaker

It’s rare when I have an opportunity to say this, but “Thank you Rep. Rusty Bowers” for this one act of patriotism. Don’t let it go to your head.

Howard Fischer reports, Arizona House speaker quashes bill to allow lawmakers to reject election results:

The House Speaker is unilaterally quashing legislation that would have given lawmakers the power to reject election results.

Strictly speaking, Speaker Rusty Bowers is not killing House Bill 2596, he told Capitol Media Services on Wednesday. That’s something he could do by simply refusing to assign it to any committee to be considered.

Instead, Bowers has taken the unprecedented step of assigning the proposal to each and every one of the 12 House committees, saying he knows full well there is no way it can secure approval of each. Most bills go to no more than two committees.

Sounds like Bowers is sending a message so everybody from Phoenix to Washington, DC, knows this bill will never see the light of day and everyone can stop talking about it.

— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) February 1, 2022

House Speaker Rusty Bowers has been a strident supporter of the election system and a vocal opponent of Trump's lies that the election was marred by fraud https://t.co/94A8lvLje2

— Jim Small (@JimSmall) February 1, 2022

The maneuver drew an angry reaction from the bill’s sponsor, Rep. John Fillmore, R-Apache Junction. He complained to Capitol Media Services that “his highness’’ was abusing his powers in deep-sixing a measure that 14 other Republicans [the Sedition Caucus, right column], out of 47 in the Legislature, support fully enough to sign on as co-sponsors. [All of whom shoiuld be removed from office, today.]

“He does things like he’s God,’’ Fillmore said of the speaker. But Fillmore acknowledged he doesn’t have the votes — at least among those in his caucus willing to stand up — to oust Bowers as speaker and install someone who would allow the plan a chance of getting to the House floor for a vote.

“Sometimes there are a great many of the legislators (who) don’t have the intestinal fortitude to do what is right,’’ Fillmore said.

He means to reject the will of the voters in a fair and free election and to allow Republican legislators “to act like gods” and veto their vote, and to send fake Republican electors to the Electoral College to make Donald Trump the first autocratic dictator of the United States. Dude, you are so fucked in the head.

Fillmore’s proposed legislation is a grab bag of changes to election laws. It would:

Repeal laws allowing anyone to get an early ballot, saying only those with an excuse, like being hospitalized, would get that right. [Arizonans have had no excuse, early voting by mail for 30 years. It was orginally a Republican proposal.]

Bar all other forms of early voting, requiring that ballots be cast only on Election Day. [Creating long lines and wait times, a favorite form of GQP voter suppression.]

Prohibit the use of Election Day voting centers available to anyone within a county, restricting people to casting ballots only in their home precinct. [Counties have been moving away from precinct voting to save costs becase the legislature inadequatley funds county election management.]

“We need to get back to 1958-style voting,’’ Fillmore said. [Ah yes,the good ol’ days of Jim Crow before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ensuring Black voters and other minorities the right to vote.]

And a return to Operation Eagle Eye, an Arizona Republican Party voter suppression operation in the 1960s in Arizona to challenge minority voters. William Rehnquist, later the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, is alleged to have been the head of a group of lawyers hoping to challenge voters in minority Democratic precincts. Oh, he did. Four Witnesses Dispute Word of Rehnquist. Operation Eagle Eye was a two-year effort, and the laws in Arizona have since made this kind of challenge illegal.

See, Jim Small, Unable to cope with 70 years of progress, Republicans want to return Arizona to the 1950s, and Laurie Roberts, Republican legislator wants to vote like we did in the good old 1950s. Wait, what?

But the provision that alarmed Bowers and some others would have required the Legislature to call itself into special session after every election to review the ballot tabulating process for both the primary and general elections.

More to the point, it would permit lawmakers to “accept or reject the election returns,’’ with the latter option paving the way for anyone to file suit to seek a new election.

Is this an ALEC bill from Rob Natleson?

That is unacceptable, Bowers told Capitol Media Services.

“We gave the authority to the people,’’ the Mesa Republican said.

“For somebody to say we have plenary authority to overthrow a vote of the people for something we think may have happened, where is it (the evidence)?’’ Bowers said of the unproven and unverified claims made by those seeking a new 2020 vote.

He said the audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election returns ordered by Senate President Karen Fann has not produced any evidence that, as some have contended, the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

“The point is, when we gave a fundamental right to the people, I don’t care if I win or lose, that right was theirs,’’ Bowers said. “And I’m not going to go back and kick them in the teeth.’’

The speaker also said he could not go along with another provision that would have scrapped the current system of having ballots tabulated by machine, replacing that with a hand count of the all the votes cast, a figure that exceeded 3.4 million in 2020.

Proponents have argued that machine counts cannot be trusted, with allegations — all never proven — that the tabulators were either hacked or programmed to produce winning numbers for Joe Biden. Bowers said the solution of hand counts is worse than any potential problem.

“There’s individual elements (of the bill) that harm accuracy, speed and dependability of a vote,’’ Bowers said. “And if I can stop it, I’m not going to let that happen.’’

Bowers acknowledged there are those within his own party who continue to insist the last presidential election was rigged [Big Lie election-results deniers]. And he said he is willing to consider changes in law designed to protect the right to vote and protect against cheating.

For example, he has allowed bills to go forward that would alter the early voting process or increase identification requirements.

But Bowers said he’s not willing to go along with “capricious’’ alterations to the law sought by “people of that ilk, the screaming, demanding, arrogant, self-righteous bunch.’’ And the speaker said it is his job to stand up and say “no,” even when others cannot — or will not.

“I would say that most Republicans don’t like it that way,’’ he said of the election-results deniers. “They’re just intimidated by these people.’’

Killing Fillmore’s bill “is just a message,” Bowers said.

Fillmore said Bowers has it wrong in saying the Legislature should have no role in reviewing — and potentially voiding — election returns.

“The Supreme Court has said that voting is our responsibility,’’ he said Wednesday after being informed of the speaker’s decision. “Who else, if not the state Legislature, would deal with this?’’

Fillmore, in introducing the legislation, said he isn’t buying arguments by election officials who say that machine counts are more accurate.

Nor was he swayed by the fact that current law already requires there be a hand count of ballots from selected precincts to compare that tally with what the machines registered. If those results are within a specified percentage, then the results statewide are presumed accurate. That is what happened after the 2020 election.

A judge separately ordered inspection of more than 1,600 ballots cast in the general election after allegations the machines had not properly tabulated the presidential race. In that case, the hand count found just nine with errors in the presidential race, not enough to declare Trump the winner here, even if that error rate ran through all similar ballots.

Bowers said that, in assigning HB 2596 to all 12 committees, he actually is giving Fillmore what he wants: the chance for one or more hearings. That could not have occurred if he refused to refer it to any committee at all, he said.

But Bowers made it clear that there is no way this bill would ever become law.

He gets that power not just by virtue of being the speaker and deciding what bills are put up for votes of the full House.

There’s also the fact that there are only 31 Republicans in the 60-member chamber. And with no Democrats in support, that means a single GOP vote against it — including his — would kill it if if even got that far.