Arizona Secretary of State

California following Oregon’s lead on universal (automatic) voter registration

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Maybe Arizona’s queen of voter suppression, Secretary of State Michele Reagan, should pick up the phone and call her counterparts in Oregon and California to learn more about what a secretary of state who actually wants to increase voter participation in elections does to make it happen.

Think Progress reports, One Simple Change Could Drastically Improve Voter Turnout In California:

Voting-RightsAs soon as this week, the California Senate could pass a bill to address its dismally low voter turnout by making registration automatic for the millions of residents with drivers licenses.

Copying a landmark law passed by Oregon earlier this year, the policy would connect DMV records with voter registration rolls, putting the burden on the voter to opt-out rather than opt-in. According to California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, this could help bring the 6.6 million California citizens who are eligible but not registered to vote into the democratic process.

“We have a lot of work to do on the strength of our democracy,” Padilla told ThinkProgress. “We need to focus on the whole pipeline: both getting more currently registered people to cast ballots, and getting more eligible Californians on the voter rolls.”

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Battle Royale over ‘dark money’ brewing in Arizona

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dark_moneyArizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan duped voters last year into believing that she cared about “dark money” campaign disclosures (I warned you that she was lying).

Since having been elected to office, Reagan has not only done nothing to address “dark money” campaign disclosures but she has now come to the conclusion that — surprise! — “my office does not have authority” to regulate dark money campaign disclosures. Reagan: ‘Dark money’ disclosure can’t happen.

If the Secretary of State, the principal election officer in Arizona, doesn’t have authority to regulate “dark money” campaign disclosures, then who does?

In Arizona we have the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, enacted by a citizens initiative, something we know that Republican office holders hate after having tried to kill the Citizens Clean Elections Commission for years.

The Commission says it has the authority to regulate “dark money” disclosures and is proposing a rule to do something about it.

Secretary of State Michele Reagan, who refuses to do anything about “dark money” campaign disclosures says “Uh-uh, no way! I am the Queen of elections in Arizona! I am the law!” So it looks as if we are headed for a battle royale over “dark money” campaign disclosures in Arizona.

Still lurking out there is Terry Goddard’s “dark money” campaign disclosure initiative by VPA Arizona yet to be filed.

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Now about that dual election system in Kansas and Arizona

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NoVoteIt was just short of a year ago that I told you about the lawsuit filed by the ACLU and League of Women Voters against Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in Kansas state court, Belenky v. Kobach, seeking an injunction against the “dual election system” established by Kobach to disenfranchise citizens of their right to vote in state and local elections if they had registered to vote using the federal voter registration form (Arizona Secretary of State Ken “Birther” Bennett established a similar dual election system in Arizona).

Because there was a parallel case in another court, Kobach v. U.S. Election Assistance Commission in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the closeness of the primary election date, Shawnee County District Court Judge Franklin Theis denied the injunction. The judge did not rule on the merits of the case. Kansas judge approves dual election system in Kansas. Both Kansas and Arizona conducted dual elections in 2014 based upon the voter registration form that voters used to register to vote.

A unanimous panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Election Assistance Commission in Kobach v. U.S. Election Assistance Commission. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the appeal from this order without comment, a surprising turn of events given that Justice Antonin Scalia suggested the convoluted legal process to Kansas and Arizona in his earlier Supreme Court opinion in Arizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc.

So what is the status of Belenky v. Kobach (2013-CV-001331) in Kansas state court?

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Michele Reagan should look to Montana’s ‘dark money’ disclosure law

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Last year when Secretary of State Michele Reagan was in the Senate and running for higher office, she was pushing her so-called “dark money” disclosure bill. I explained at the time that Sen. Michele Reagan’s dark money disclosure bill will accomplish little:

MicheleReaganSen. Reagan’s bill “to include the names of the three largest contributors” will only result, at best, in the disclosure of “Kochtopus” alphabet soup 501(c) organizations — Russian nesting dolls — set up to hide the true identity of the actual contributors, who are millionaire and billionaire plutocrats. It is not a serious attempt to regulate the dark money organizations corrupting our elections. It is pure posturing by her for her campaign to become Arizona’s next Secretary of State. We can do better than Michele Reagan, the co-author of the GOP Voter Suppression Act, HB 2305.

Nevertheless, opinion makers like The Arizona Republic’s Laurie Roberts — whom I believe is genuinely concerned about the corrupting influence of “dark money” in Arizona politics — truly madly deeply wanted to believe that Michele Reagan was also genuinely concerned about the corrupting influence of “dark money” in Arizona politics. Like Peter Pan, Ms. Roberts assured readers “If you believe, clap your hands; don’t let [“dark money” regulation] die.”

Only since her election as Secretary of State, Michele Reagan has failed and/or refused to take any action against “dark money” groups. Quite the opposite, she even intervened on behalf of one “dark money” group in one lawsuit. Even Peter Pan Laurie Roberts is now disillusioned. Has Michele Reagan gone over to Arizona’s dark side? Hindsight is 20/20. The trick is knowing when you are being played, and not encouraging others to fall for it.

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The public wants the influence of money out of politics, but is cynical that anything can be done about it

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The New York Times this week reports a new Poll Shows Americans Favor an Overhaul of Campaign Financing:

MoneySpeechAmericans of both parties fundamentally reject the regime of untrammeled money in elections made possible by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and other court decisions and now favor a sweeping overhaul of how political campaigns are financed, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll.

The findings reveal deep support among Republicans and Democrats alike for new measures to restrict the influence of wealthy givers, including limiting the amount of money that can be spent by “super PACs” and forcing more public disclosure on organizations now permitted to intervene in elections without disclosing the names of their donors.

And by a significant margin, they reject the argument that underpins close to four decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence on campaign finance: that political money is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. Even self-identified Republicans are evenly split on the question.

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