voting rights

Referendum to block ‘vouchers on steroids’ bill is on track to qualify for the ballot

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Good news is so rare these days, but here is some good news . . . let’s hope. Arizona group says school voucher bill repeal is on track:

A group that opposes a major private school voucher expansion bill signed by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey says it is on track to collect enough signatures to place the law on hold.

Save Our Schools spokeswoman Dawn Penich-Thacker says the group isn’t releasing an exact count of the number of signatures it has collected. But she said the all-volunteer effort should have well above the minimum of 75,000 signatures by the Aug. 8 deadline.

“We know we have enough petitions out in the field, we know exactly who has them and we have enough out that if there was such a thing as 100 percent we could be getting more than 150,000 back,” Penich-Thacker said in an interview late last week.

Opponents say vouchers siphon money from the state’s underfunded public schools and the expansion will allow wealthy families to use state cash to send their children to private and religious schools. They also say vouchers won’t cover total costs at many private schools, meaning people of average means won’t be able to use them.

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If the effort succeeds, the voucher expansion will be put on hold until voters can weigh in during the November 2018 election.

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Trump’s fraudulent ‘voter fraud’ commission is on hold pending a court ruling on privacy

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The New York Times reports that three lawsuits have already been filed against Trump’s fraudulent “voter fraud” commission. 3 Lawsuits Filed Against White House Panel on Voter Fraud:

[T]he White House panel investigating claims of voter fraud and other irregularities was hit with a salvo of lawsuits on Monday that accused it of violating federal privacy laws and illegally operating in secret.

Three lawsuits, filed separately by civil rights groups, underscored the depth of opposition by the Trump administration’s critics to the panel, the Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, even before it formally meets. The commission’s official mandate is to look at flaws in federal voting systems and practices that could encourage fraud and undermine public confidence in elections.

But advocacy groups and many Democratic leaders have called it a Potemkin exercise intended to validate President Trump’s groundless claim that millions of illegal ballots cost him a popular-vote victory in November. The true goal, they say, is to lay the groundwork for Congress to place strict qualifications on registering and voting that would primarily suppress opposition to Republican candidates for office.

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In response to public opposition, Secretary of State Michele Reagan now says she will not comply with Trump’s fraudulent ‘voter fraud’ commission

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Last Friday, Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan was an all too compliant foot soldier for Donald Trump’s plan for voter suppression. She agreed to turn over “publicly available” voter information data to Trump’s fraudulent “voter fraud” commission.

Then came the firestorm of public opposition and the recognition that other secretaries of state were not so blindly willing to turn over their voter registration rolls to Trump’s fraudulent “voter fraud” commission.

As of Saturday morning, more than half of all US states – 29 at last count – had refused to comply with the commission’s requests, saying they are unnecessary and violated privacy, according to statements from election officials and media reports. 29 States Refuse To Give Data To Voter Fraud Panel.

As a result, Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan has done an about-face and on Monday said the state will not provide extensive voter registration information to Trump’s fraudulent “voter fraud” commission. Arizona to oppose handing over voter information to Trump commission:

Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan said Monday she is rejecting the Trump administration’s request for extensive voter information, saying it isn’t in the state’s best interest. [Or anyone else’s.]

Her decision, announced late Monday as the July 4 holiday neared, comes after nearly a thousand people had complained by email to her office about the possibility the state would hand over voter data to a commission looking into allegations of voter fraud.

It’s also a reversal from her position last week.

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Trump’s fraudulent ‘voter fraud’ commission is for GOP voter suppression

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Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud caused him to lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million votes, even while he won the presidency with an electoral college victory. Without evidence, Trump tells lawmakers 3 million to 5 million illegal ballots cost him the popular vote.

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In pursuit of the delusions of our always insecure egomaniacal Twitter-troll-in-chief, Donald Trump issued an “Executive Order Establishing of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.”

Yeah, that’s not at all what this executive order is about. It is about Trump trying to validate his delusions that he won the popular vote but for voter fraud by millions of Americans. Trump’s commission on voter fraud is, well, fraudulent.

There is no evidence to support Mr. Trump’s claims that millions of people voted illegally in 2016, which have been discredited repeatedly by fact-checkers.

Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, warned when Trump’s executive order was announced that the commission is “a thinly veiled voter suppression task force,” adding that it was “designed to impugn the integrity of African-American and Latino participation in the political process.” NAACP Legal Defense Fund Statement on Expected Voter Fraud Commission. She is absolutely right.

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Another GOP voter suppression plan

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Why is it every time I see a piece of bad legislation in the Arizona legislature, this guy’s name appears to be attached to it? What the heck is wrong with voters living in legislative district 6 (specifically in Navajo, Gila and Yavapai Counties)? You ought to be embarrassed to send someone as backwards as this to the Arizona legislature.

The latest bad legislation is yet another GOP voter suppression plan sponsored by Rep. Bob Thorpe still seeking to bar student voting on campus:

The proposal by Rep. Bob Thorpe would put a provision that students who want to vote would be able to do so only by signing up to get an early ballot from the voting precinct where they were living before they went to college, presumably the address of their parents.

More to the point, they would not be able to use their college address. And that would apply not only to those who live in a campus dormitory but even those who have off-campus apartments or houses.

This is where Howard Fischer in his reporting should have stated up front (he puts it at the very end of his report) that the U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed (no opinion) that this was unconstitutional in SYMM v. U.S., 439 U.S. 1105 (1979), in which the Court summarily affirmed United States v. Texas, 445 F.Supp. 1245 (S.D.Tex. 1978), holding unconstitutional the denial to Prairie View students of the presumption of bona fide residency extended to other Waller County students. The three-judge District Court panel relied on a series of college student voting rights precedents under the Voting Rights Act and the 26th Amendment.

In other words, this issue has long ago been decided. Yet every election cycle some jurisdiction tries to keep college students from voting where they are attending college, and every election cycle this unconstitutional voter suppression effort is enjoined by the courts. The baffling part is the regularity with which jurisdictions keep trying to do this even when the law is clearly established.

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