voter suppression

AZ GOP war on voting continues unabated

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The evil GOP bastards in the Arizona legislature never stop trying to restrict your right to vote and to disenfranchise you. The Arizona House voted Monday to create some new crimes for certain voter-registration activities in a move several lawmakers suggested will suppress voting, particularly by the young and minorities. The Arizona Capitol Times reports, … Read more

Arizona GOP war on voting rights is continuing

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Arizona’s new reigning Queen of Voter Suppression, Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, has run into a bit of trouble in her latest voter suppression effort.

SB1046 would require voters who request a ballot by mail to return it by mail. If not, they’d be required to go to a polling place and vote in person, rather than have the option to drop off the mail-in ballot at election sites across the state.

The bill was the subject of fierce debate in the Senate on Wednesday before senators took a voice vote to advance the bill one step further in the legislative process (COW vote), but the Arizona Capitol Times reports the Early voting change is short on votes:

While the Arizona Senate took another step towards banning voters from dropping off their mail-in ballots at polls, the measure is effectively dead due to opposition from two Republicans.

Sens. Heather Carter and Kate Brophy McGee are opposed to SB1046, which require voters who request a ballot by mail to return it by mail. If not, they’d be required to go to a polling place and vote in person, rather than have the option to drop off the mail-in ballot at election sites across the state.

Some 228,000 mail-ballots were dropped off at polling sites on the day of the 2018 general election, and both Carter and Brophy McGee said they object to barring that long standing practice in Arizona elections. Carter, a Cave Creek Republican, acknowledged that she’s one of those voters who delivers her mail in ballot by hand.

“The analogy someone used with me is toothpaste back in the tube,” Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, told the Arizona Capitol Times. “People are used to doing it that way, they want to do it that way. I’d love to find a way to be mree efficient, but this isn’t the way to get there.”

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GOP election fraud in North Carolina 9th congressional district

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Republicans purvey the myth of in-person voter fraud at the polls, for which there is no evidence to substantiate their conspiracy theory.

If voter fraud is going to occur, it will occur with early voting mail-in ballots. The hand-full of voters prosecuted for “double voting” in Arizona are snowbird residents who voted in their home state and also voted in Arizona. None served time.

But what happened in North Carolina’s 9th congressional district is not about voter fraud (the media really needs to stop using this term incorrectly). This is an actual case of election fraud — the stealing of an election by the GOP — through voter suppression of minority voters’ early mail-in ballots.

The Washington Post reports, North Carolina election-fraud investigation centers on operative with criminal history who worked for GOP congressional candidate:

[A] local operative named Leslie McCrae Dowless ran his command center for Republican Mark Harris in the 9th Congressional District primary this spring.

Dowless sat at a desk at the back of one of the strip’s vacant storefronts, where he oversaw a crew of workers who collected absentee ballots from voters and updated the Harris campaign on the numbers, according to Jeff Smith, who is the building’s owner and a former Dowless friend.

Smith provided his account about the primary campaign to state investigators, who are examining whether Dowless’s activities then and in the general election violated North Carolina’s election laws, which allow only individual voters or designated close relatives to mail a ballot.

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Arizona Supreme Court sides with GOP voter suppression of citizens initiatives

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While you were distracted by the long Thanksgiving Day holiday weekend, the Arizona Supreme Court finally issued its opinion in the “Outlaw Dirty Money” initiative case. Arizona Supreme Court ruling supports legal tactic used to keep initiatives off ballot:

The Arizona Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of a legal tactic used by those seeking to keep voter-proposed laws off the ballot. [“The only issues we must decide are the constitutionality of §19-118(C) and the propriety of the trial court’s exclusion of the non-appearing subpoenaed circulators’ petition signatures.”]

The Court’s opinion is narrowly tailored. “As our decision does not turn on whether the Committee strictly complied with § 19-118(C), we need not determine the constitutionality of the strict compliance requirement of § 19-102.01(A).” The “strict compliance” constitutional challenge is left to another day.

In a unanimous ruling Wednesday, the justices reaffirmed the right of people to craft initiatives and seek to have them approved.

“And we are reluctant to impede such civic efforts,” they said.

But Justice John Lopez, writing for the court, said there is nothing unduly burdensome about requiring paid circulators to register and provide an address where they can be subpoenaed. Lopez said throwing out the signatures collected by those who don’t show up in court does not impair the constitutional rights of people to propose their own laws.

This is fundamentally anti-democratic, and wrongly decided. The valid signatures of voters who legally signed the petition in good faith are disenfranchised if the circulator cannot be located or fails to appear in court, for any reason. This legal tactic invalidates the otherwise valid signatures of voters given in good faith through no fault of their own.

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