Arizona Secretary of State

Time for another referendum (citizens veto) of GOP voter suppression – HB 2407

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ArizonaIn 2013, Arizonans rose up in righteous indignation against the GOP Voter Suppression Act, HB 2305, and qualified a citizens referendum (citizens veto) for the 2014 ballot. In 2014, Tea-Publicans repealed HB 2305 before voters could have the opportunity to vote on it and to make the rejection of the legislature’s action permanent under the Voter protection Act, itself a form of voter suppression.

In 2015, Tea-Publicans returned with a piecemeal attempt to enact HB 2305 as a package of separate bills to make it harder for the citizens of Arizona to pursue a citizens referendum of their voter suppression efforts. Some of those bills didn’t make it (they will be back next year) and others did.

One GOP Voter Suppression bill that passed and that has now been signed by Gov. Doug Ducey is HB 2407 (.pdf), which now makes it much more difficult and expensive for Arizona citizens to exercise their constitutional right to citizens initiatives, referendums and recall. Tea-Publicans are now imposing the “strict compliance” with statutory requirements for referendums to initiatives and recalls as well.

What this means is that petitions can be disqualified for hyper-technical deficiencies such as typographical errors, typeset, line spacing and margins, a missing serial number, incomplete voter information (such as date of signature), an error in the affidavit of signature gatherer or notary public, etc. Despite your best good faith efforts to comply with all the rules, the Secretary of State is now empowered to disqualify petition sheets for such hyper-technical deficiencies.

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Kobach v. U.S. Election Assistance Commission appealed to U.S. Supreme Court

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Last November, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down proof-of-citizenship requirement for National Voter Registration Form:

NoVoteA panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, in a unanimous decision, struck down Arizona’s Prop. 200 (2004) proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration and a similar provision of Kansas law in Kobach v. U.S. Election Assistance Commission (Nos. 14-3062 and 14-3072). Specifically, this case concerns whether Arizona and Kansas have to accept the federal National Voter Registration Form without additional proof of citizenship. The Arizona Voter Registration Form proof-of-citizenship requirement has previously been upheld by the Courts.

Read the Opinion Here (.pdf).

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The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled that Kansas cannot require proof-of-citizenship documents — almost always a birth certificate or passport — from prospective voters who register using a federal voter registration form. The court also said that a federal agency doesn’t have to alter the [federal] form to fit Kansas requirements.

Arizona has a similar proof-of-citzenship requirement, and Kobach argued the case on behalf of both states in conjunction with Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett.

I commented at the time, “Justice Antonin Scalia, who suggested this convoluted legal process to Kansas and Arizona in his earlier Supreme Court opinion, is salivating at the prospect of judicially rewriting the federal law in favor of “states’ rights” when this case winds its way back to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a temporary victory, I fear.”

We are about to find out. The Wichita Eagle reports, Kris Kobach asks U.S. Supreme Court to restore his proof-of-citizenship law:

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision and restore a state law he wrote requiring proof-of-citizenship documents to register to vote.

Kobach wants the Supreme Court to undo the November decision by the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeal, in a case pitting Kansas and Arizona against the federal Election Assistance Commission and a bevy of voting rights groups.

The appeals court ruled that the states could not require document citizenship proof from prospective voters who register using a federal form that doesn’t demand it – and that the commission doesn’t have to alter the federal registration form to comply with the states’ demands.

Kobach argues Supreme Court guidance is needed because the case is of paramount national importance.

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Because the third time is the charm? Arizona does not need a Lieutenant Governor

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ArizonaIn some ways you have to admire the persistence of Tea-Publicans. No matter how many times their bad ideas get rejected by the voters, they just keep coming back year after year to try again, hoping that the next time will be the charm.

I wish many of the Democrats I have worked with over the years had this kind of sticktoitiveness. Too many of them have taken defeat personally, and lose their will to fight the good fight again. They could use the political fortitude of Arizona legend Mo Udall, who reprised a line from California politician Dick Tuck after losing to Jimmy Carter in 1976: “The people have spoken — the bastards!”

What has become a perennial bad idea from Tea-Publicans is their desire for a Lieutenant Governor in Arizona.

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Kochtopia: The GOP culture of corruption in Arizona

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Drac-bats

h/t “Dracula Untold”

The Dark Lord of “dark money” in Arizona, Republican consultant Sean Noble of DC-London, the money laundering bag man at the center of the “Kochtopus” dark money network, has released his minions in the final 10 days of the campaign against Democratic candidates.

The Arizona Republic reports today that “Kochtopus” front group 60 Plus Association, which receives its funding from from organizations with links to the Koch brothers, is dropping another $900,000 into attack ads against Democrat Fred Duval on behalf of the candidate from Koch, Doug Ducey. Newly aggressive DuVal attacks Ducey.

60 Plus has also dropped another $304,000 on attack ads against Clean Elections candidate for Secretary of State, Democrat Terry Goddard, who has promised to clean up dark money in Arizona if elected. $304,000 ‘dark money’ ad attacks Goddard.

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GOP pollster shows Dems leading in all statewide races

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In the past week I have seen ads from some “dark money” group attacking Sandra Kennedy in the Arizona Corporation Commission race on the air here in Tucson, which is odd, given that all the Corp. Comm. candidates are running clean elections, we have been assured by all the politicos at the Arizona Capitol Times and the Arizona Republic that the Corp. Comm. race is in the bag for the GOP, and if one was going to make an ad buy it would be in Maricopa County, not Pima. Wassup?

Good-News-702555Now I know why this “dark money” group suddenly started spending money in a down ballot race that does not garner enough attention from the voters: a GOP pollster that has done work for Governor Jan Brewer and the Republican Governors Association — a biased poll for sure — nevertheless shows Democrats leading in all the statewide races. You can choose to believe this GOP pollster or not, but clearly the RGA believes it and it is coordinating last minute ad buys with its “dark money” network accordingly. Believe it!

The Arizona Capitol Times reports, First poll shows DuVal ahead, while Ducey leads most others:

For the first time, a publicly released poll of the Arizona governor’s race showed Democrat Fred DuVal in the lead.

The live-caller poll, conducted on Oct. 7-8 by Oregon-based Moore Information, a respected GOP pollster, showed DuVal leading Republican nominee Doug Ducey 39-36. Libertarian candidate Barry Hess had 3 percent of the vote, Americans Elect candidate John Lewis Mealer had 1 percent and 21 percent were undecided.

No margin of error was made available in the poll. As a live-caller poll of 400 respondents, the margin of error should be around 4.9 percent. The Moore Information poll was not commissioned by either gubernatorial campaign, according to the source who provided it to the Arizona Capitol Times.

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