HB2305

Bill to criminalize voting activists is back on reconsideration (Updated)

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Last week I posted an Action Alert: Tea-Publicans again try to criminalize voting activists (Updated):

2305hb11The vote on the Striker to SB 1340 FAILED on a 3-3 tie vote today. Republican Heather Carter joined with Democrats Ken Clark and Jonathan Larkin to defeat the bill. Be sure to thank Heather Carter for standing up to do the right thing.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of bill that will get attached to another bill in the dying days of the session — it is never over until sine die. You have to watch these guys like a hawk.

Buried in reporting on another bill this morning, Arizona Senate gives initial OK to election signatures measure was this at the end of the report:

Senate Bill 1340 by Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, requires any person who delivers more than ten early ballots provide photo identification for public record.

Shooter’s bill failed to pass, but an amendment making it a felony for anyone but a family member or candidate to collect early ballots from voters will get a second chance at life in the Arizona House.

I have been told that the House began debating this bill this morning, but I do not find the strike everything to SB 1340 from last week on the calendar for today.

UPDATE: The Arizona Daily Star reports, Arizona bill making early ballot collection illegal advances:

Republican lawmakers voted Wednesday to keep groups that may have special interests from picking up early ballots and taking them to the polls.

But not politicians themselves.

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Action Alert: Tea-Publicans again try to criminalize voting activists (Updated)

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I posted earlier this week Tea-Publicans are putting the monster of HB 2305 back together:

2305hb11One bill by Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, requires any community volunteers who collect more than 10 early ballots and deliver them to polls to provide photo identification that would be made publicly available online.

Senate Bill 1340 (.pdf), which passed on a 16-12 vote and now moves to the House, would only apply to volunteers dropping off early ballots, a point Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Phoenix, brought up in floor debate.

It  just got worse in the House. Tea-Publicans will revive one of the most controversial portions of HB 2305  via a last-minute strike-everything amendment from Rep. Michelle Ugenti (R-Scottsdale) to a bill scheduled to be heard in a special meeting of the House Elections Committee (.pdf) on Thursday “Upon Adj. of Floor” in House Hearing Room 4.

The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports, Lawmakers attempting to revive ‘ballot harvesting’ ban:

The strike everything amendment scheduled to be attached to SB1340 would make it a felony for volunteers from a political committee to collect mail-in ballots from voters and deliver them to elections officials, a tactic Latino get-out-the-vote groups have successfully used to increase voter turnout in mostly minority neighborhoods.

For the record, both the Republican Party and Democratic Party offer ballot pickup and delivery to voters, and have done so for years. The purpose and intent of this measure specifically is to target Latino voting organizations that in recent years have been offering this service to voters to increase Latino voter turnout. It was never a problem until a class of voters that Tea-Publicans do not want voting started doing it.

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Tucson Rep. Ethan Orr Votes FOR Voter Suppression Bill HB2196

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Squeaky clean, self-proclaimed Republican moderate LD9 Rep. Ethan Orr voted for the voter suppression bill, HB2196 today, and it passed in committee. You’ll remember that the House Judiciary Committee tried to hear this bill last week, but when PEOPLE showed up in the hearing room and flooded the phone lines, the vote was postponed. HB2196 is the Republican end-run around the voters to … Read more

Sunshine Is Best Disinfectant: AZ Legislature Delays Voter Suppression Discussion

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Wave05-sm72by Pamela Powers Hannley

Yesterday, the Judiciary Committee of the Arizona House of Representatives was scheduled to discuss repealing last year’s omnibus voter suppression bill (HB2305). Since thousands of Arizona citizens had signed petitions to stop implementation of HB2305 and put voter suppression on the 2014 ballot, sneaky legislators had devised a plan to do an end-run around voters by repealing the destined-to-fail-at-the-polls bill and replace it with several individual voter suppression bills. (After all, we can’t let citizens decide issues as important as who gets to vote or how measures are put on the ballot.)

Thanks to a widely distributed press release from the Protect Your Right to Vote Committee, news of Republican legislators’ Voter Suppression Plan B flew out across the blogosphere on Wednesday, resulting in much citizen– and news media– interest.

Overnight, hundreds of concerned Arizona voters called and wrote to members of the committee urging them to respect the will of the voters and let them have their say on HB2305 in November. Dozens of people showed up to speak at the hearing as well as three television news crews. Judiciary Chairman Eddie Farnsworth then told the amassed crowd that he was holding his repeal bill (HB2196). He has since rescheduled the hearing on his bill for next week.

Proving once again that sunshine is the best disinfectant and voter suppression is a topic best discussed in the dead of night with no witnesses, Farnsworth decided not to open discussions with TV cameras rolling and citizens watching.

HB2305 Redux: Arizona Legislature Hell Bent on Suppressing Your Right to Vote

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by Pamela Powers Hannley

In the wee hours of the 2013 session of the Arizona Legislature, Republican legislators cobbled together several voter suppression initiatives that had gone no where and passed them (at the urging of House Speaker John Boehner) as an omnibus voter suppression bill (HB2305).

During the summer, outraged Arizonans collected 145,000 signatures to halt implementation of HB2305 until the people voted on it in 2014.

Hell bent on cheating their way into office… er… voter suppression,  a group of legislators now wants to circumvent a statewide vote on HB2305 by repealing HB2305 and re-introducing its component parts for potential passage in the 2014 session.

Below is a press release from the Protect Your Right to Vote Committee. It’s time to make some phone calls – especially to Ethan Orr (LD9)– and tell your representatives that if they want to pass a voter initiative it should be a bill that guarantees the right to vote– not a set of bills that will deny citizens their rights.