The MAGA/QAnon Cult Is Back With Voter Suppression, Election Subversion Bills

While the MAGA/QAnon cult’s “stop the steal” election “reforms” to make it easier for Republicans to steal elections and to nullify any election results that do not go their way are not among Governor Ducey’s top priorities, thy are among the top priorities of our MAGA/QAnon seditious insurrectionist GQP state legislators.

This is where the battle lines in defense of American democracy against creeping GQP authoritarianism are being drawn.

Howard Fischer reports, Elections priority for GOP lawmakers:

Lawmakers return to the Capitol Monday with a full agenda of things they want, ranging from reenacting what the Supreme Court voided to deciding what to do about previously approved tax cuts that are subject to voter repeal.

But the biggest fights may be over how much to alter state election laws. And at least some of the proposals stem from the continued charges that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump despite numerous lawsuits and audits that have shown those claims have no basis in fact.

A few of what lawmakers are expected to debate could be considered relatively innocuous, at least on the surface.

For example, Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, proposes to make the dates of the primary and general elections a state holiday. That would mean a day off for public workers.

Oh noes! Troll Boy, Rep. John Kavanagh, will have a conniption fit over this based upon his trolling of this blog.

The plan, however, could run into business opposition because the same measure says anyone registered to vote “may be absent from the service or employment” to go vote and cannot be penalized or having his or her pay docked. By contrast, current law allows just a three-hour window — and one that is selected by the employer.

Fearless and bold—@WendyRogersAZ is on a mission with me to save our country and put America and Arizona first. https://t.co/4RbgdE4WRt

— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) January 9, 2022

But [“Stop the Steal” Seditious Insurrectionist] Rogers has a more far-reaching measure, setting up a new Bureau of Elections within the governor’s office to investigate any allegations of fraud in any state, county or local election.

Um, someone should expalin to her that the legislature is already pissing away our tax dollars on a partisan Election Integrity Unit that it placed in the Attorney General’s office, you know, the office that is actually tasked with investigating and prosecuting crimes.

That new $5 million agency would have the power to not only subpoena individuals but also get a court order to impound election equipment and records. It would issue public reports but would be unable on its own to bring criminal charges. [Because that would be the jurisdiction of the Attorney General’s office.]

There also will be debates over the actual process of how people vote.

Arizona already uses paper ballots. But they are tallied by machines. That had led to a series of claims — never proven — that the tabulated results could be manipulated, whether through stray marks on the ballots or entirely forged ones.

House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, brushed aside calls to have ballots counted entirely by hand as impractical.

“If we’ve got seven months to wait for an election, then count away,” he said.

“Most people want it in a relatively short amount of time,” Bowers said. “And that’s what I’m interested in delivering.

But that excuse doesn’t hold water for [QAnon Queen] Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, who will head the Senate Government Committee, where Senate elections bills will be vetted. [Jesus Christ! What a sick joke.]

“Do you want convenience or do you want secure elections,” she said. “Pick one.”

Anyway, Townsend said hand counts are possible.

Remember when Republicans had a conniption fit over the slow counting of votes, using the length of time involved as an excuse to manufacture all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories about the vote being stolen? Trump, Republicans call vote count into question amid tight McSally-Sinema race for Senate:

President Donald Trump and Republicans in Arizona and nationally are stoking claims of deliberate election fraud in the state’s U.S. Senate race as Martha McSally and Kyrsten Sinema await results of a vote that could swing in either’s favor.

No group has brought forward allegations of specific criminal activity, although one Republican lawsuit addressed an equity issue over how early-ballot signatures are verified.

“Just out — in Arizona, SIGNATURES DON’T MATCH,” Trump posted on Twitter on Friday afternoon. “Electoral corruption — Call for a new Election? We must protect our Democracy!”

[L]ocal Republicans brought a legal case against Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes and other county recorders over the inconsistent way counties verify signatures on mail-in ballots that are dropped off at the polls on Election Day.

[S]tate Republican Chairman Jonathan Lines raised the level of accusations, saying Fontes, a Democrat, “cannot be trusted to administer elections in Arizona.”

And a precursor to the Arizona Senate’s GQP sham “fraudit” in 2020, in 2018 the Arizona GOP plans to audit Maricopa County recorder’s role in election:

The Arizona Republican Party announced Thursday it was forming an independent audit of the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office’s role in the midterm election.

Chairman Jonathan Lines said he’s asked Phoenix attorney Stephen Richer to conduct the audit with Phoenix law firm Statecraft PLLC advising.

The results of that partisan audit by Stephen Richer, who is now Maricopa County Recorder overseeing elections: “Preliminary results of an audit commissioned by the Arizona Republican Party concluded that Maricopa County’s Democratic recorder didn’t violate any laws during the 2018 general election and that two disputed policies he implemented didn’t affect the outcomes of any races.” AZGOP audit says Fontes actions questionable, not illegal.

As the Arizona Republic explained at the time, Despite rampant claims, there is no evidence of voter fraud in Arizona:

Arizona’s vote-counting process can be frustratingly long — but it has been that way for years. More voters are casting ballots by mail, which demands time-consuming verification procedures.

So what’s spurred some to toss around the loaded “fraud” word?

In comparing the processes and time frame of ballot processing in this election with those of the past, there are only two major differences this year: There are more high-profile, too-close-to-call races than usual and there’s a Democrat in charge of counting ballots in the state’s most populous county.

Stephen Richer, who got elected Maricopa County Recorder based on his role in the 2018 GQP partisan audit, is now the fiercest defender of the Maricopa County Recorders office he leads against the “Stop the Steal” Seditious Insurrectionists in the 2020 eelction and the Arizona Senate GQP sham “fraudit.” Richer defends Maricopa County audit amid GOP lawmakers’ criticism. He is even supporting candidates who oppose these MAGA/QAnon seditious insurrectionists. Stephen Richer creates PAC to back ‘pro-democracy’ Republicans.

The point is, if you think that counting ballots (and the hand count audit) is slow now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.  If all ballots are counted by hand, injecting human error and potential malfeasance into the process, it will take much longer to count and will do nothing to increase public confidence in the process. The Arizona Senate’s GQP sham “fraudit” is Exhibit A. Election Experts Call Cyber Ninjas’ Arizona Audit Findings ‘Laughable,’ Say Company Lied. Sowing doubts about election results is the actual goal of QAnon Queen Kelly Townsend.

Back to Howard Fishcer:

Even if the state sticks with machine counts, there are proposals to address questions of accuracy of the equipment.

Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, supports increasing to 5% the number of precincts where there had to be a random hand count of votes following each election to compare with the machine totals. The current figure is 2%.

And for those who think that doesn’t go far enough, Mesnard also wants to allow anyone who has the money to pay the cost to demand a full recount of any race.

This is the “any rich Republican who doesn’t like the election results can sue” option. This is sooo J.D. Mesnard, the tool of corporations and the wealthy, and “Mr. Flat Tax” who wants to take away your constitutional right to bring citzens initiatives and referendums, and who rejects the will of the voters on Prop. 208 to fund public education.

Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale [the longtime Queen of GQP voter suppression bills] is looking at the issue through a different lens, altering the law on when there has to be an automatic recount.

In most cases, that occurs when the margin of difference between the top two candidates is less than 0.1% or 200 votes, whichever is less. Ugenit-Rita, who is hoping to become the Republican nominee for secretary of state, the state’s chief election officer, wants to move that up to 0.5%.

That change is significant. Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona and its 11 electoral votes by 10,457 over Trump, a margin of just 0.3%. Had this measure been in effect in 2020, it would have required a recount of the more than 3.3 million ballots already cast.

Then there’s the question of the ballots themselves. And that has caught the attention of Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, [the QAnon loving insurrectionist leader of “Stop The Steal” in Arizona, and who was present for the MAGA/QAnon violent insurrection in the Capitol on January 6, 2021 (see below)] who also is angling for the GOP nomination for secretary of state. [OH HELLS NO!]

He has been pushing to replace the traditional ballots with paper that is specially encoded with things like watermarks, ballot identification numbers, QR codes and even embedded holograms.

You know, the crazy shit that the Cyber Ninjas were looking for but never found. This potential felon should never be allowed anywhere near election bills, and should have already been expelled from the Arizona legislature. Make this the first order of business this week.

There are other more far-reaching proposals, many stemming by claims by Trump and his supporters, even before the 2020 election, that early voting is subject to fraud.

Those claims continue, with GOP gubernatorial hopefuls “Krazy Kari” Lake and Matt Salmon signing a pledge to eliminate early voting. And Lake in particular continues to insist that Joe Biden did not win the vote, a contention she repeated in a Twitter post this past week claiming, without any proof, that 200 “bag loads of ballots” were dumped in Arizona.

Note: In 1991, state lawmakers allowed Arizona voters to request an absentee ballot for any reason. Before the change in the law, a voter requesting an absentee ballot had to prove they could not make it to the polls on election day. In 1997, state lawmakers made a simple change in Arizona election law. The word “absentee” was replaced by “early.”

Arizonans have been early voting for 30 years. in 2020, well over 80% of Arizona voters voted early, either by mail or in person. Requiring everyone to cast a ballot on Election Day would lead to extraordinary long lines, and would increase the opportunities for GQP voter suppression and voter disenfranchisement – the real goal behind this proposal.

So far, though, calls to eliminate the practice entirely have so far attracted little support.

In the 2020 election, of the 3.4 million people who voted, about 3 million cast early ballots. And many Republican lawmakers say their constituents like and use the opportunity to vote by mail.

But concerns about their validity remain.

QAnon Queen Townsend wants to let people continue to get their ballots in the mail. But she seeks to address the allegations of dumped ballots by requiring voters to return them, in person, to a designated voting location.

This inconvenience is also a form of voter suppression and voter disenfrachisement for a non-existent problem.

Rogers already has introduced a variant, saying that counties cannot set up drive-up drop boxes for ballots, saying that, except for people with disabilities, they have to walk it into a polling place or election office where someone is monitoring. But that bill would appear to continue to allow mail-in ballots.

Again, this inconvenience is also a form of voter suppression and voter disenfrachisement for a non-existent problem.

And Mesnard continues to push for a requirement for anyone who casts an early ballot to confirm their identity with one of several forms of identification, like a driver’s license number or last four digits of their Social Security number. Right now the only verification is done by county election officials who compare the signature on the ballot envelope with those already on file.

Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, said she is looking for measures that are designed to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.

“I know that seems to be a cliche right now,” [it is] she said. But Fann said she is interested in discussing issues like the kind of paper used for ballots as well as ensuring that the chain of custody is not broken from the time a ballot is dropped into a box until the final count is over.

QAnon Queen Townsend has a proposal to address the latter, making it a crime for anyone to “misplace” a ballot as well as to say that those which are not included in initial tallies are invalid, even if they turn up later, and cannot be counted.

There may be even more radical proposals waiting in the wings.

Last year Rep. Shawnna Bolick, R-Phoenix [the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick], crafted a measure allowing the Arizona Legislature to overturn the results of a presidential election, even after the results had been certified and even after Congress had declared the winner, right up until noon on Jan. 20 when the president is sworn in.

This is known as election subversion, or election theft. Did I mention that she is married to an Arizona Supreme Court Justice? This should enrage all of you.

Bolick did not respond to inquiries on whether she plans to reintroduce the measure.

There are other related measures that don’t directly affect how elections are run or votes are counted but also could influence the results.

Seditious inurrectionist Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City, has been pushing for an investigation of social media platforms and search engines. He contends that some of these have been very biased towards one political party over another.

For example, he said, the algorithms used by search engines to determine results when someone asks a question can be altered so that certain answers or subjects come up first. And there have been claims that sites like Twitter and Facebook have a liberal bias [just the opposite is true], an argument based in part on decisions by some sites that banned Trump after they said he violated their policies by inciting people to violence, particularly ahead of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

So he could not incite further insurrectionist violence! Sonny boy is OK with what happened on January 6.

What makes this an election-related issue is that Arizona law requires the reporting of “in-kind” contributions to a candidate, meaning a donation not of cash but of a service with financial value. And those who violate campaign finance laws with unreported in-kind donations can be fined.

Dude, Donald Trump has been the biggest beneficiary of social media disinformation and propaganda. And if you want to talk about in-kind contributions, let’s talk about your social media posts, and those of Wendy Rogers, Mark Finchem, Kelly Townsend, “Krazy Kari” Lake, etc.

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The Insurrection Index seeks to identify all those who supported Trump in his bid to hold on to power despite losing the election, in the hope that they can be held accountable and prevented from inflicting further damage to the democratic infrastructure of the country. See Arizona. (This list needs updating).