by admin | Nov 12, 2021 | Elections, News and Updates
People are fed up. And parents, in particular, are frustrated with school boards across the state. Now, they are starting to speak up. But it’s not just with their voices at local school board meetings. Last week, they spoke up at the ballot box.
Across Maricopa County, multiple bond and override elections were held affecting various school districts. And in a year that didn’t include a midterm or presidential election, you would expect a low-turnout election like this one to benefit the funding proponents.
But the results were very telling.
Most of the bonds and overrides affecting school districts in suburban areas failed. And in many cases, they weren’t even close.
Override continuations were voted down in the Buckeye, Agua Fria, Liberty, and Litchfield school districts while bonds went unapproved in the Higley, Cave Creek, and Queen Creek school districts. A budget increase for the school district in Fountain Hills also failed.
The only suburban areas that were exceptions were Kyrene and Chandler. This must have the left in a tizzy.
For years, teachers’ unions and corporate media, like AZ Central, have pushed the narrative that voters share their belief that schools are underfunded. But this is not true. The Arizona Supreme Court even blew the “underfunded” narrative to pieces in a ruling against Prop 208 back in August. Now, voters appear to be on to their game.
After all, it’s hard to get voters to buy in to more funding when a former superintendent is indicted on 18 counts related to procurement fraud, misuse of public monies, fraudulent schemes and practices, and more. That all happened in Higley—and it went largely ignored by the media. Interestingly enough, Higley had one of the largest gaps in this election, voting down the bond 55% to 45%.
But make no mistake. This election wasn’t just about funding. Parents have gotten sick and tired of school closures, masks on kids, and the way school districts turned their backs on them and their children during the pandemic.
They’re frustrated with school districts that are hiding curriculum while remaining committed to Critical Race Theory and all the rest of the woke culture that has taken over many public schools. And they’re outraged about being labeled “domestic terrorists” just because they pushback on concerns they have with their children’s schools.
While the bond and override elections often get ignored, they should serve as a wake-up call for Red for Ed and the teachers’ unions. But given the echo chamber they operate in—along with the endless cheerleading they get from the media—don’t expect them to make any changes to their radical strategy.
In fact, if the response here is anything like the response to the election in Virginia, they’ll probably just double down on labeling anyone who doesn’t vote the way they want them to as a racist. But that hasn’t proven to be a winning strategy. And if the left doesn’t want to wake up to that reality, maybe more voters will.
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by admin | Oct 26, 2021 | Elections, News and Updates
When lawmakers fought to pass SB1485 earlier this year, legislation designed to clean up Arizona’s early voter list, the radical left and mainstream media went ballistic. Their attacks against the bill were relentless, ill-informed, and unhinged. Not only did they argue that mail-in voter fraud really isn’t a problem, they declared that any attempt at stopping ballots being mailed to ineligible voters is nothing short of Jim Crow.
It didn’t matter to them the stories that almost everyone has heard or experienced personally. Like the story of a sitting US Congressman who received a mail-in ballot for his mother who had passed away 10 years ago.
Or how in one case, a voter’s cousin moved out of the country in 2011. The county was notified of the move, and no ballot was received in 2012 or 2014. Then in 2016, ballots started arriving once again. Not only had her cousin moved 5 years prior and informed the county, but she had also only ever voted in person and wasn’t on PEVL. And despite additional notifications that her cousin had moved, another ballot was received in 2018 and for this year’s local election.
State Representative Travis Grantham received one in the mail too – for his sister who hasn’t lived here for 15 years and votes in California.
Why would anyone be OK with a mail-in voting system that is this sloppy? Even for those skeptical about the concerns of voter fraud, the sheer waste of taxpayer money associated with sending ballots to ineligible voters is reason enough to merit reform and stop the abuse.
Yet incredibly, the response from election officials has been to shrug their shoulders. For them, it doesn’t matter if a ballot is sent to the wrong address because someone would have to willfully commit a crime and forge the voter’s signature. Did you catch that? Creating opportunities for fraud isn’t a big deal because we have laws on the books against fraud.
Following that logic, everyone should rest at ease and get rid of their home security systems. Haven’t they heard? Breaking and entering is already illegal. No need to have alarms and deterrents because an individual would have to willfully commit a crime to break into their home.
The notion that we don’t need mechanisms in place to deter voter fraud is tantamount to believing that our elections should be conducted on the honor system. No proof of citizenship? No problem, just check a box on our voter registration form. We will believe that you’re a US Citizen. No ID to vote? Don’t worry, we trust that you are who you say you are.
It’s a laughable response to a serious problem. And the fact that voters have witnessed this problem during this off-year all-mail election lines up perfectly with one of the Audit Report findings. Over 23,000 early ballots were mailed to and cast by individuals who had moved prior to the ballots even being sent by the county.
That’s why maintaining clean and current voter rolls is imperative, and it’s why the Audit Report included it repetitively as a recommendation to lawmakers. Ballots would not be mailed to ineligible voters if the voter rolls were clean and up to date.
Additionally, lawmakers need to look at the statutes authorizing these ballot-by-mail elections. Every election must allow for an in-person voting option. An all-mail election is voter suppression, suppressing the votes of citizens who do not trust voting by mail, prefer to vote in person, or perhaps cannot even receive and send mail or have unreliable mail service.
Arizonans don’t want honor system voting. We want an election system that is both accessible and secure – where it is easy to vote and hard to cheat. We want to trust that voter rolls are clean, and that fraud is deterred and punished when it does occur.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
by admin | Oct 9, 2021 | Elections, News and Updates
Laws are meaningless if they aren’t enforced, are misapplied or misconstrued. The duly elected Arizona legislature crafts and passes election bills, and the Governor signs them into law. The Secretary of State, however, is tasked with prescribing “rules to achieve and maintain the maximum degree of correctness, impartiality, uniformity and efficiency” in implementing those laws.
This is done through the Elections Procedures Manual (EPM). But instead of crafting this with “impartiality” to attain the “maximum degree of correctness” Secretary of State Katie Hobbs seems intent on subverting state law in some instances, obfuscating in others, and as highlighted in a previous article, doing an end-run around a United States Supreme Court decision that upheld an Arizona election integrity practice.
The good news is that Hobbs doesn’t have unilateral authority to do this. She was required to submit this draft manual to Attorney General Brnovich and Governor Ducey by October 1st. Both have to sign off on the draft manual for it to go into effect. If they decline, we stick with the 2019 manual and Hobbs’s changes die.
Sending Illegally Registered Non-Citizens Instructions on How to Re-Register to Vote
Until the 2020 election, the state was operating under the manual from 2014 produced by then Secretary of State Ken Bennett. This is because Secretary Michelle Reagan did not submit a draft in 2016 and in 2018 Ducey declined to approve her changes.
Some areas of law have not changed since then, but the procedures manual has. One of these instances is around noncitizens who are registered to vote, individuals most often listed as “federal only” voters.
The 2014 manual requires the Secretary of State to send County Recorders juror questionnaires they receive on which an individual has indicated they are not a US citizen. The manual instructs Recorders to check if the individual is registered to vote and, if so, cancel the registration. Further, it encourages Recorders to then notify the County Attorney or Attorney General. Why? Because the individual has either perjured themselves on the juror form (a crime) or they are not a US citizen and fraudulently registered to vote (also a crime).
Compare this to Katie Hobbs’s manual. In it, Hobbs instructs Recorders to send these individuals a notice informing them of their indication of not being a citizen on a juror questionnaire and that they have 35 days to send in Documentary Proof of Citizenship (DPOC). If they send in DPOC, they become a “full ballot” voter. If they don’t, then the registration will be cancelled.
However, Hobbs’s manual goes a step further by instructing Recorder’s to send a notice of cancellation to the individual that actually gives instructions on how to re-register. And it has no mention of informing the County Attorney or Attorney General to investigate what has been committed, likely a felony act.
End Run Around Brnovich v. DNC
In Arizona, counties can conduct elections by precinct polling locations or vote centers. For precinct polling, voters can only vote in their assigned precinct. If they show up at a wrong location, election workers are instructed to direct the voter to the correct precinct. If the voter insists on voting, they can cast a provisional ballot instead of going to the correct location. However, they are informed that unless they prove they are eligible to vote in that precinct, the ballot won’t tallied.
Democrats sued over the law. The case was taken all the way to the US Supreme Court and this summer the Court decided. The opinion in Brnovich v. DNC completely upheld this out-of-precinct prohibition. In it, Justice Alito writes “precinct-based voting has a long pedigree in the United States, and the policy of not counting out-of-precinct ballots is widespread.”
But it seems Katie Hobbs doesn’t care about what the highest court in the nation says, because she inserted a few short lines in the manual this year directing election officials to duplicate these provisional ballots and tally the votes for elections for which they are eligible. This is a total end-run around state law and the US Supreme Court. It’s also a practice Justice Alito expressly mentioned in the majority opinion, writing that “partially counting out-of-precinct ballots would complicate the process of tabulation and could lead to disputes and delay.” This change must be rejected.
Delayed Cleanup of Mail-In Ballot Rolls (SB1485)
It doesn’t stop there. This past session, Republican legislators passed SB1485. The law requires counties to send a notice to voters on the Permanent Early Voter List (now Active Early Voter List) who have not voted in any election for the past two election cycles. If the voter fails to respond to the notice within 90 days, they are removed from AEVL and would have to vote in-person or re-enroll in the program to receive a mail-in ballot.
Though disagreement exists about whether this bill allows counties to look “retroactively” at the last two election cycles of non-voting to immediately start sending notices, or whether they must wait for a voter to not vote in 2022 and 2024 before sending a notice, many lawmakers who passed it and the organizations who advocated for its passage, SB1485 was always intended to take effect immediately. It is a reasonable interpretation of the bill and the intent of the bill’s sponsor.
A top election lawyer in the nation agrees. Hans von Spakovsky, whom President Trump appointed to his Presidential Advisory Council on Election Integrity in 2017, served on the Federal Election Commission, and was a litigator in the Justice Department, opined that “SB1485 will go into effect immediately after passage, not in 2026 as some have claimed.”
Attorney General Brnovich should issue his own opinion affirming this interpretation and require this change in the EPM, before signing his approval.
Procedures for Signature Verification
Lastly, with the findings in the Audit Report and a recent article about Cochise County Recorder David Stevens on ballot envelopes, it is apparent that there is a lack of uniformity in how signatures on early ballot envelopes are verified and that there are areas of concern.
For instance, the report from EchoMail and the most recent response from Maricopa County indicate that before election workers look at mail in ballots, a private company scans them all, downgrades the image quality, and then hands them over to election officials. The County then compares these downgraded scans of ballot envelopes to the signature on file to, somehow, come to the conclusion that the handwriting matches. In Cochise County, Stevens says they compare the actual ballot envelope to voter registration files, not low-quality scans.
Unfortunately, the process isn’t spelled out in statute, so the EPM is used to ensure procedures are in place to comply with the laws that do exist – and that there is uniformity. Nowhere in statute or in the EPM does it say counties could or should use a private company to scan these and that the scans, instead of the physical envelopes, can or should be used for signature verification.
This is certainly an area that Brnovich should push to ensure the procedures in the EPM first and foremost comply with statute and the spirit of the law, but secondly are uniformly enforced around the state.
What We Can Do
These are just four areas of concern, and there are many others.
The Free Enterprise Club will be sending a letter to the Attorney General and Governor Ducey with a detailed list of issues in the EPM, but they need to hear from constituents too. That’s why Arizonans should let them know that we want an election system where it easy to vote, and hard to cheat. That means that Governor Ducey and Attorney General Brnovich should REJECT every proposed change by Katie Hobbs that either violates state law or attempts to rewrite it. They can stop this from happening, and we need to encourage them to do so.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
by admin | Oct 1, 2021 | Elections, News and Updates
Easy to vote and hard to cheat. That should be the benchmark for every single election we have.
Voters should not have to choose between having a secure election or having an accessible election. They can have both. And in Arizona, we’ve certainly made our elections accessible.
But that hasn’t always been the case with the security of our elections. And the results of the Arizona audit issued in September show just that.
These are significant issues that need to be addressed. Thankfully, the audit report made multiple recommendations that are common-sense election integrity policies.
And the most important one is something we’ve been saying for years:
Mail-in voting should incorporate an objective standard of verification for early voter identification, similar to the ID requirements required for in person voting.
Yes. The Arizona audit recommended instituting universal ID. And that’s why right now is the perfect time for the Arizonans for Voter ID Act.
This initiative for the November 2022 ballot would:
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- Improve existing in-person voter ID.
- Establish voter ID for mail-in ballots.
- Deter ballot harvesting by enhancing voter ID requirements.
- Provide a FREE voter ID option to lawfully registered Arizona voters who need it for voting.
Think about what this would mean for future elections. For one, we would no longer need to rely on a highly subjective process to verify signatures, which can often lead to illegal votes being counted and legal votes not being counted.
In addition, this initiative would make it nearly impossible for someone to vote in our state after they had moved.
And to top it all off, requiring universal voter ID would not be cumbersome.
The people of Arizona already provide basic identification in their daily lives to purchase alcohol or cigarettes, obtain a driver’s license, board a commercial flight, donate blood, open a bank account, purchase a firearm, receive unemployment benefits, obtain auto insurance, purchase or rent a home, and more.
It’s commonsense that we should we require the same for something as important as voting in an election. Thankfully, most Arizonans agree.
Statewide polling from earlier this year shows that an overwhelming majority of Arizona voters support voter ID requirements. In fact, every race and ethnicity support voter ID, along with the majority of Republicans, Independents, and Democrats.
Now, the audit’s recommendation makes it clear. It’s time for universal voter ID in Arizona. It would ensure that our elections are still easy to vote in while making it that much harder to cheat. And that’s something every single resident in Arizona should be able to get behind.
You Can Make a Difference
Elections should be both accessible and secure. That’s why universal voter ID is so important. We must protect the ballot of every qualified Arizona voter and ensure the integrity of our elections.
Find out more about this initiative and what YOU can do to ensure it makes it onto the November 2022 ballot.
by admin | Sep 30, 2021 | Elections, News and Updates
The much anticipated audit report has finally been released, and it has proven to not be a disappointment for those seeking an in-depth look at election security and potential fraud in Maricopa County.
Unsurprisingly, the establishment media spent little time actually reviewing the 90-page report, instead focusing on the Presidential recount figures showing Biden still winning Maricopa County.
This lazy analysis ignored the more critical aspects of the audit, including the real, substantive findings that identified legitimate issues with our election process and a comprehensive list of election reform recommendations.
The audit recommendations are not based upon wild conspiracies, as the left and corporate media might want you to believe. Instead, they are measured, reasonable, common-sense election integrity policies that will ensure that every legal vote is properly counted. In fact, most of the recommended reforms from the audit are election law changes that the Free Enterprise Club has been urging lawmakers to adopt for years. We knew these were critical before—the audit findings confirm and show the necessity of them.
So, what are the most critical election integrity reforms recommended by the audit?
In-Person Voters Moved Prior to Registration Deadline
Among the most concerning findings is that potentially 2,382 voters moved out of Maricopa County prior to the registration deadline yet they still cast a ballot in-person. The audit team relied on data provided by Maricopa County and compared it with best-in-class commercial data to find individuals who moved before the election but appear on the voted list provided by the county.
Because the data indicating voters moved is third-party, commercial data, this might not be perfectly accurate. That’s why further investigation by the Attorney General is warranted. But it is important to highlight that this is in-person voting, not vote by mail. All systems have vulnerabilities and front-end security is most effective in limiting fraudulent and illegal voting.
Recommendation: Voter Roll Maintenance
To that end, the audit team recommended changes to laws regulating voter registration maintenance. Specifically, comparing the voter rolls to the National Change of Address database both 90 days before an election and a week prior to early ballots being mailed to check for individuals who have left the state along with regular voter roll maintenance.
Doing this would help ensure that only qualified electors, which requires residence in the county, would be on voter rolls at the polls preventing unqualified electors from casting a ballot. This is an issue The Club pushed to reform last session with SB1106 which was sponsored by Senator Mesnard and would have required counties to cancel voter registrations for individuals who register to vote in another jurisdiction.
Mail-In Voters Moved Prior to Ballots Being Sent
In the same vein, the audit team found 23,344 mail-in ballots potentially cast from voters who had moved prior to October 5th, when ballots were first mailed. The majority of these, 15,035, were moves within Maricopa County, but a total of 6,591 were from voters who moved out of the state prior to October 5th, and 1,718 moved to another county in Arizona.
State law does not allow these ballots to be forwarded. There is a mechanism for voters to make a one-time request for a ballot at a different address, but this volume of ballots being sent to individuals who had moved—especially the 6,591 who moved to another state—and were cast and counted is more than concerning.
Recommendation: Early Voting List and Voter Roll Maintenance
As with the last, the audit team recommends more comprehensive voter roll maintenance. Ensuring only lawful, qualified electors are registered and on the voter rolls is one of the best deterrents of fraud and illegal voting. Doing a check against different databases 90 days before an election and a week prior to ballots being mailed will ensure that ballots are not being mailed to voters who are no longer qualified and sent to addresses where they no longer live.
Ballot Affidavits Missing Signatures
The last area deserving spotlight is the initial review of the mail-in ballot affidavits, more recognizable to voters as the envelope where they sign. The Club has supported an in-depth look at these from the beginning, and this first review confirms the need to look even further.
EchoMail, who was contracted by the Senate a few weeks ago to conduct the first look, analyzed the images of ballot envelopes provided by Maricopa County. They came up with a count of verification ready affidavits that was 9,589 ballots fewer than what Maricopa County reported in the official canvass.
This is because they received over 17,322 duplicate envelopes, found 1,919 lacking a signature (compared to Maricopa’s report of 1,455), and another 2,580 with “scribbles.” EchoMail was provided with 1,929,240 affidavits, bringing the total that were ready for signature verification to 1,907,419 compared to Maricopa County’s tally of 1,917,008 that was reported as ready for verification.
Recommendation: Universal Voter ID (Audit Report Supports Voter ID Ballot Initiative)
Unfortunately, EchoMail wasn’t contracted to analyze signatures to audit the performance and accuracy of the county’s process. But the major discrepancy between Maricopa County and the Audit Team is unsurprising.
The process used to verify signatures is highly subjective which makes it an inconsistent measure of identity verification which can lead to both illegal votes being counted, and legal votes not being counted. Rightly so, the audit team recommended reforms that require mail-in ballot affidavits include objective identification requirements like those required for individuals voting in person.
This would mean a universal voter ID requirement in Arizona, something that 82% or Arizona voters support. And it is exactly what the Arizonans for Voter ID Act ballot initiative would do—ensure that no matter when you vote, where you vote, or how you vote, identification will be required. It was filed well before the report was released because it is good and commonsense election integrity policy. Now the audit team, after spending months analyzing the election, recommends it and bolsters its necessity.
Additional Findings
These aren’t the only three issues. The audit report details election data that was potentially deleted the night before the County commissioned review of Dominion machines, for which the team recommends legislation for better chain of custody for data and ensuring unique login credentials for everyone who has access to it.
The report also finds that potentially 9,041 more ballots were returned than received by voters, 5,295 voters who potentially voted in multiple counties, a 1,551 discrepancy between votes in the canvass and voters in the county’s final “voted” file, and 86,391 voters who voted but cannot be found in the commercial data source used, among others.
The Path Forward
The county has responded to many of these, but they should be fully investigated by the Attorney General as suggested in Senate President Karen Fann’s letter to Brnovich which included all of the reports and related data for launching an official investigation.
Additionally, the importance of front-end security in our election processes is more apparent than ever. Potential fraud and illegal voting were found with both in-person and mail-in voting. The best deterrent and prevention for both is strong ID requirements and clean and current voter rolls.
These recommendations were repeated throughout the report and are reforms that the Club has supported for years. The Governor and lawmakers should convene a Special Session to pass these legislative recommendations and others made by the audit team.
If they can’t do that, they must come into the Regular Session in January ready to quickly craft and pass these into law in time for the 2022 elections. Voters want a system that is accessible and safeguarded from fraud—where it is easy to vote, and hard to cheat. This report and its recommendations confirm we can maintain our accessibility while making reforms to ensure better security.
You Can Make a Difference
Elections should be both accessible and secure. That’s why universal voter ID is so important. We must protect the ballot of every qualified Arizona voter and ensure the integrity of our elections.
Find out more about this initiative and what YOU can do to ensure it makes it onto the November 2022 ballot.
by admin | Sep 13, 2021 | Elections, News and Updates
We should be doing everything we can to ensure election integrity moving forward. Too many Americans have lost faith and trust in our election system. And while the results of the last election are done, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn lessons from November 2020 and apply them going forward.
Someone should tell that to Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. Last month, Hobbs released a draft of a new elections manual. This manual establishes the election procedures that are to be used by the counties in Arizona for accepting and tabulating votes.
If approved, the manual would go into effect next year…when Democrat Katie Hobbs will be running for governor.
Problems with the elections manual
While the Arizona Free Enterprise Club is currently conducting a thorough review of the manual to identify any issues and concerns, one major problem has already arisen. In her manual, Hobbs proposes counting votes for certain offices, like president or statewide offices including governor, even if the voter shows up and votes at the wrong precinct.
But a rule like this opens the door to extensive fraud. And it’s why the United States Supreme Court ruled against this sort of thing just a couple months ago.
Do you remember that? Apparently, Katie Hobbs forgot. Or maybe she just wants to protect her own interests.
In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the nation’s highest court ruled 6-3 in favor of Arizona’s ban on ballot harvesting and the state’s requirement that individuals vote in their assigned precinct for their votes to count.
This isn’t that hard to understand. The decision came down on July 1. And yet, just a little over a month later, Hobbs is trying to circumvent the law and the Supreme Court’s decision with her new elections manual.
The path forward
Thankfully, Katie Hobbs does not have sole jurisdiction on this matter. While the deadline for approval of a new manual used to be 30 days before a general election, that changed in 2019 when HB2238 was signed into law.
This requires the Secretary of State to submit the draft elections manual to the Attorney General and Governor by October 1 of every odd numbered year.
But the process doesn’t stop there.
Both the Attorney General and the Governor’s office will get an opportunity to review the manual and recommend changes. And they have until December 31 to approve it in order for the manual to take effect. According to the Attorney General’s Election Integrity Unit, they sent 115 suggested edits to Katie Hobbs in 2019 for the 2020 manual. 100 of those were incorporated, and Mark Brnovich approved the manual on December 19, 2019. Governor Ducey then signed off the next day.
So, there is time to make sure your voice is heard. And once the Club completes our review, we will let you know how you can take action and report your concerns to both the Attorney General and Governor’s office.
Because the people of Arizona have already made their voice heard. And both Republican and Democrat voters want an election system that makes voting accessible and fraud proof.
Instead of trying to sidestep the law, maybe Katie Hobbs should listen to the people.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
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