voting rights

Tea-Publican legislators, doing the bidding of our corporate overlords, are coming for your constitutional rights

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I warned you about this earlier this year. Arizona’s authoritarian Tea-Publicans are coming for your constitutional rights.

The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) has a lengthy report, A raft of bills would make Arizona’s initiative process more difficult:

More than a century after Arizona’s voters gave themselves a Constitution and the right to write laws, legislators still can’t quite accept the fact that they have competition.

And this year [Tea-Publican] legislators, backed by powerful business interests including the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, are preparing to launch a sustained assault on the initiative process.

Legislators this year have proposed a rash of bills designed to make the initiative process more difficult. They’re proposing tougher signature-gathering requirements for groups seeking to change the law and restrictions on funding streams for initiative campaigns.

They’re also seeking an outright repeal of the Voter Protection Act, which prevents lawmakers from simply repealing voter-approved laws, or even changing them unless that change has bipartisan support and furthers the intent of the proposition.

Failing that, they’re hoping voters will at least go along with some reforms to the Voter Protection Act.

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More troubles in the Secretary of State’s office

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Earlier this week Arizona’s queen of voter suppression, Secretary of State Michele Reagan, was once again in trouble for  poor management of her office. More stumbles at Arizona Secretary of State’s Office:

Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan’s office has hit some rough spots as it tries to put into practice all of the changes wrought by the campaign-finance overhaul it steered through the Legislature last year.

The office started the new year by notifying political-action committees that their registration was canceled. A few days later, it sent committee officers a memo walking that back.

Then came the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend, where frustrated candidates said they couldn’t navigate the new website to report their contributions and expenditures by a Jan. 15 deadline. Some candidates reported the website wouldn’t accept their attempts to enter campaign expenses.

“It’s frustrating,” said former state Rep. Chris Ackerley, a Tucson Republican. “It seems like we’re in a twilight-zone thing.”

He was heading up to the Secretary of State’s Office for guidance on how to complete his report and not run afoul of the new law.

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Arizona’s authoritarian Tea-Publicans are coming for your constitutional rights

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The Arizona Constitution clearly spells out that Arizona citizens are the ultimate lawmakers:

Arizona Constitution, Article 4 Part 1 Section 1 – Legislative authority; initiative and referendum

1. Legislative authority; initiative and referendum

Section 1. (1) Senate; house of representatives; reservation of power to people. The legislative authority of the state shall be vested in the legislature, consisting of a senate and a house of representatives, but the people reserve the power to propose laws and amendments to the constitution and to enact or reject such laws and amendments at the polls, independently of the legislature; and they also reserve, for use at their own option, the power to approve or reject at the polls any act, or item, section, or part of any act, of the legislature.

But our authoritarian Tea-Publican state legislators and governor, and their masters in the Chamber of Commerce organizations and the “Kocktopus” network,  are planning an assault on the constitutional right of Arizonans to enact their own laws unfettered by legislative interference. Lawmakers plan assault on voters’ right to make laws:

A series of measures being proposed would change everything from signature threshold to imposing new requirements on the ability to use paid circulators. But the biggest would ask voters to repeal the measure they approved in 1998, theVoter Protection Act, which specifically bars lawmakers from tinkering with what the public approves at the ballot.

imussol001p1That’s not to say there won’t be other issues consuming lawmakers’ time when the session begins Monday. Those issues range from how to divide up the more than $9 billion in revenues to who gets tax cuts, especially because Gov. Doug Ducey vowed during his 2014 campaign to propose a tax cut every year he is in office. And he told Capitol Media Services he remains committed to that.

The big issue, obviously, is school funding. But don’t underestimate the political fighting that will occur over initiatives and who gets to write – and repeal – state laws.

It was voters who approved not only higher taxes on tobacco but also limits on where people can smoke. And it was voters who required funding of early childhood education programs, allowed the medical use of marijuana and approved the state’s first-ever minimum wage.

But it was the more recent 58-42 percent approval of Proposition 206 – the law that hikes the minimum immediately to $10, takes it to $12 by 2020 and mandates paid time off – that has angered members of the business community. They want new registration requirements on those who collect signatures for money, as well as make it easier to challenge those signatures.

There also are moves to require a certain percentage of signatures on ballot propositions to come from the state’s 13 rural counties.

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SCOTUS divided on racial gerrymandering cases

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On Monday, cases from North Carolina and Virginia came before the eight justices of the Supreme Court, presenting the challenge of finding the delicate balance in considering race when redistricting political boundaries — and the court’s reluctance to weigh in on partisan politics. Questions Of Race And Redistricting Return To The Supreme Court:

The_Gerry-Mander_EditThe North Carolina case comes from a group of voters who went to court challenging the state’s first and 12th districts. They contend that the Legislature packed more minority voters into these two districts in an effort to dilute their voting strength in neighboring districts.

The state defends the lines drawn for one of the challenged districts by saying it was trying to meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act that minority voters have the chance to elect their chosen representatives. It defends the other as based on the goal of increasing a partisan advantage, not on race.

So far at least, the Supreme Court has ruled consistently that race may not be the predominant factor in redistricting except in narrow circumstances. But the court has refused to get involved in partisan gerrymandering.

“If your claim is ‘we were just exercising naked political power,’ well, the courts are not touching that, at least not yet,” observes Richard Hasen, an election law specialist at the University of California, Irvine. “But if the claim is about race, then the courts are going to get involved.”

The distinction is often “nonsensical,” he says, especially in places in the South, for instance, where the vast majority of African-Americans are Democratic voters, the majority of whites vote Republican, and the overlap between race and party is enormous.

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A reform agenda for voting rights

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The Arizona Secretary of State emailed me a missive entitled “Preparing For The Future of Voter Registration” in which she says:

MicheleReaganArizona is using an aging, cumbersome voter registration system that could potentially expose the identities and voting behavior of millions of citizens. County election personnel are bogged down engaging in manual processes in order to perform the most fundamental requirements of their job. It’s time to be proactive and take steps to improve efficiency and better ensure our data is secure.

Over the past several months our office has undertaken a complete top-to-bottom review of the more-than decade old registration system. While election officials around the state are well aware of its technological limitations, we’ve come to better understand the unique challenges that will face future election officials as well. As the number of voters continues to grow, the time has come to prepare for the future.

Once we finalize our assessment, we’ll begin working with our county partners to develop a plan for the future. That future must include 21st century cybersecurity protections and a registration system that makes it easier for elections staff to process basic information efficiently.

Election officials around the state have begun the process to transform the way we do business internally, as well as how we will deliver services to voters in the future. I’m looking forward to help spearhead the process and partner with our local officials to usher in this new era.

You will note that the Secretary’s focus is entirely on “a registration system that makes it easier for elections staff to process basic information efficiently,” not on a registration system that makes it easier for citizens to register and to vote.

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