(Update) The face of voter suppression in Arizona

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Senator Michele Reagan (R-Scottsdale) is the sponsor of the Voter Suppression Act, HB 2305, and has filed her own committee to defend her Voter Suppression Act, the purposefully misleadingly named Protect Our Secret Ballot committee (HB 2305 has nothing at all to do with secret ballots). The face of voter suppression in Arizona.

It turns out that more Tea-Publicans want in on the action suppressing voters in Arizona. The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports Elections
law supporters start second committee to defend it:

The referendum effort against the state’s
controversial new election law is now facing a two-pronged opposition,
as a second political action committee filed paperwork this week to
fight the referendum.

The new committee, Stop Voter Fraud, is headed up by a former staffer
for Jonathan Paton’s 2012 failed congressional campaign, Robert Mayer,
and Arizona GOP counsel Lee Miller. The group seeks to defend sweeping
changes to the state’s election laws that were adopted in the last
session.

Sen. Michele Reagan, R-Scottsdale, who sponsored several provisions
of the bill that was ultimately signed into law, is chairing another
committee, Protect Our Secret Ballot.

Miller confirmed that he and Mayer created the new committee over
differences among the law’s defenders about potential strategy.

The new PAC won’t compete with Reagan’s
Protect Our Secret Ballot, he said. Rather, Stop Voter Fraud would
supplement the senator’s campaign to uphold the election law.

* * *

Miller said when the threat to H2305
became more serious, Reagan, who authored many of the provisions in the
bill, emerged as the “natural leader” among defenders.

“But again, as you worked through the breadth of issues covered in
H2305, she’s more passionate and more focused on some parts of H2305 and
not on others. But somebody has to be available to educate the public
on the whole bill, if for no other reason than you’ve got to protect
your flank,” Miller said.

Reagan said Tuesday she didn’t know there was a new committee supporting her bill, but said “the more the merrier.”

* * *

The Arizona Democratic Party executive
Director, D.J. Quinlan, said the second committee signaled fissures
between those supporting the law, and said he suspected the split had
something to do with the involvement of Nathan Sproul, a Republican
political strategist who runs Lincoln Strategy Group.

Sproul has been embroiled in controversy over the past decade over allegations of voter registration fraud.

Reagan last week said if Sproul was involved in the campaign, her
“time on the committee will be very short.” Reagan would not elaborate
on why she’s hesitant to work with Sproul other than to say, “I think
there’s a lot of reputable companies in Arizona that we could be working
[with], that I would rather be working with.”

Follow up calls to Miller to confirm Sproul was working with the Stop Voter Fraud committee were not returned.

Quinlan also took issue with the name of the committee, calling it
misleading. Quinlan had similar problems with the name of Reagan’s
Protect Our Secret Ballot committee.

Quinlan said there have only been a handful of cases of alleged voter
fraud in Arizona over the past decade, and none of them would have been
prevented by HB2305.

“Voter fraud is not a major problem in Arizona,” he said.

In fact, our current Secretary of State, Ken "Birther" Bennett, testified to a
U.S. Senate panel in December last year that Arizona prosecuted a
whopping fifteen cases of voter fraud in the last eighteen months.
And none of these were cases of non-citizens voting, but rather
"snowbirds" who voted in Arizona and in another state. 2.3 million
ballots were cast in the 2012 election in Arizona. Ken Bennett's passion for voter fraud turns up fifteen cases.

The clarion call of "voter fraud" is the only true fraud being perpetrated as an excuse to suppress voters.