Arizona Free Enterprise Club Files Criminal Complaint Over Prop 140 Fraudulent Signatures

Arizona Free Enterprise Club Files Criminal Complaint Over Prop 140 Fraudulent Signatures

PHOENIX, ARIZONA – Today, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club filed a criminal complaint with Attorney General Kris Mayes and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell over the nearly 40,000 duplicate signatures that were discovered during the petition review on Proposition 140, which had taken place last year before the November General Election. Proposition 140 sought to enact a California-style election scheme built around ranked choice voting and jungle primaries. It was soundly defeated by Arizona voters at the ballot box.

Of the nearly 40,000 duplicates that were included when the Prop 140 Committee submitted their signatures to the Arizona Secretary of State, it was uncovered that 253 people had signed petitions five or more times. One individual had signed 15 times.

“Double or even triple-signing the same initiative petition over the span of several months may well evince merely carelessness or forgetfulness. Signing one’s name five, ten, or even fifteen times, however, is not susceptible to that excuse,” said Scot Mussi, president of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. “There is certainly, at the very least, ample reason to believe that the individuals identified in Exhibit A knowingly violated Arizona law. I accordingly request that your respective offices open an investigation and pursue all appropriate criminal charges.”

Read the complaint here. See the exhibit of duplicate signatures here.

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Democrats Want Arizona to Remain National Laughingstock on Election Night

Democrats Want Arizona to Remain National Laughingstock on Election Night

Another election has come and gone, and once again Arizona showed the nation that it doesn’t know how to count votes. Like a bad movie we are forced to watch every two years, rampant delays in processing early ballots left voters waiting over a week to find out who won key races in the state.

Virtually everyone around the country watching our slow-motion election train wreck, from major media outlets to national pundits, agreed that fixing Arizona’s tabulation process is long overdue.

Everyone, that is, except Governor Katie Hobbs and her partisan Democrat allies in the legislature.

This shouldn’t be a total shock to those who have followed previous attempts to reform our election system. Over the last couple of years, Democrats have opposed popular election reforms like requiring basic proof of citizenship to vote, all while millions were pouring in illegally through the southern border. They argued against commonsense voter ID laws, claiming our elections are safe and secure without them (and California democrats even banned voter ID outright).

And now, after Arizona was again one of the last states to finish ballot processing, the Democrats remain opposed to ensuring we have election night results.

So, what’s the Democrats’ excuse? Curiously, Governor Katie Hobbs omitted any mention of fixing our broken election system in her state of the state address. Her allies in the legislature, when pressed on the issue, have resorted to calling demands for election night results a “manufactured crisis.”  

Arizona has become the laughingstock of the country, and Arizona Democrats seemingly want to keep it that way.

It’s their choice if they want to represent a fringe minority that doesn’t care how badly our elections operate. But the rest of us want reform, and that is what our organization is fighting for at the state legislature.

At the top of the list is moving the current deadline for returning early ballots. Currently, every voter in Arizona is eligible to receive a mail-in ballot, and that ballot may be returned at any time until 7PM on election day. The problem with this system is that ballots returned within the last couple days cannot be processed and tabulated by election night. This past election several hundred thousand ballots were dropped off on election day, causing a weeklong delay in processing the results.

Simply setting a deadline – Friday before the election – would immediately eliminate this delay.  Voters would still have more than three weeks to fill out their ballots and either return them by mail or drop them off with the county. And voters can still vote in person – early and on election day.

And if we want to add even more ease, access, and security to our process, the silver bullet is on-site tabulation of ballots at the polling location. Want accessible elections? Allow for on-site tabulation. Want secure elections? Allow for on-site tabulation. Want efficient election results? Allow for on-site tabulation. It is a win-win-win, for the voters, and for the state.

Voters that enjoy the convenience of filling out their ballot on their own time in their own home, can continue to do so. But if they do not want to leave it to the post office to deliver their ballot, and they don’t want to drop it off, or they do not drop it off by the Friday cutoff, then they can show up at a polling place and tabulate their ballot themselves. This means more voters showing ID before casting their ballot, and it means their ballots are tabulated immediately.

These reforms have proven to work in other states like Florida. And they shouldn’t be new ideas to lawmakers or Katie Hobbs, since these are ideas our organization has promoted for years.

We have the opportunity to increase access, increase security, and increase the efficiency of our elections. In other words, we could finally no longer be the laughingstock of the country in the next election and all to come. The question is, will Arizona Democrats and Katie Hobbs stand in the way?

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Will “Election Officials” Finally Stop Fighting Reforms to Get Results on Election Night?

Will “Election Officials” Finally Stop Fighting Reforms to Get Results on Election Night?

Another election has come and gone, and unsurprisingly, Arizona is yet again the butt of national jokes for taking weeks to process ballots and tabulate votes. While some in the corporate media still attempt to defend our vote counting circus, most everyone is in agreement that big changes are needed. It doesn’t take being an election expert to recognize that states with far greater populations, who also experience large rates of early voting, somehow get their votes counted on election night or near to it.

It’s a fix that is long overdue, yet for over five years the reform has continued to run into a political meatgrinder at the state Capitol. Since 2019, our organization, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, has supported, championed, and authored bills to ensure we get results on election night. And while Democrats in the legislature have been an obstacle to reform (they have universally opposed any reforms geared toward getting faster results), they have not been the only impediment to fixing the problem.

The real culprit is opposition from county “election officials,” or more precisely, their taxpayer-funded lobbyists. For years, our so-called election experts have worked overtime to stop any reasonable reforms to Arizona’s mail-in voting system. Their tactics are incredibly disingenuous. When people express their frustration about the glacier pace of vote counting, they clap back (usually with dripping condescension) that their hands are tied by existing law. But when lawmakers introduce bills to change those laws, those same election officials send their army of lobbyists down to the Capitol to fight reform at every turn.

We already know what their strategy will be. First, they will complain that the proposed tabulation fix, while used in over a dozen other states, simply won’t work here. Then they will claim that they don’t have a position on any particular date for ending early voting in order to ensure quicker results. But when the legislature does pick a date (any date), it somehow becomes an “implementation nightmare.” By implementation, what they mean is that it may create some work for them, and they don’t like it.

The good news is that some of these roadblocks appear to be dissolving. We are encouraged to see the Chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Thomas Galvin, has signaled support for meaningful changes to our election system. In addition, the election of pro-reform Recorder Justin Heap in Maricopa County should help break through the election administration resistance in our state’s most populous county.

There really is a very simple path to speed up election results in Arizona without restricting access to the ballot box and maintaining or even increasing the integrity of the process. We can make elections secure, efficient, and accessible. To start, cutting off early voting on the Friday before the election provides time for election officials to process those ballots before they open back up on election day, meaning those ballots will be tabulated and results ready to be posted as soon as the polls close.

Allowing voters to tabulate their own early ballots on site after providing identification means less time doing signature verification, removing ballots from envelopes, inspecting them to ensure there are no problems, and tabulating them. A step further would be requiring objective ID on mail-in ballots, so that instead of relying on subjective signature verification, counties can quickly compare objective numbers.

Taken together, these modest reforms will bring us closer to getting results on election night, and at the latest, election week. The question is, are the “election officials,” their taxpayer-funded lobbyists, and their friends in the media finally willing to step back and let it happen?

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School Choice Is Here to Stay in Arizona

School Choice Is Here to Stay in Arizona

Since the results of the 2024 election came in, much of the focus has been on President-elect Donald Trump’s historic win—and rightfully so. Trump won every single swing state in a massive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, and he beat her in the popular vote too.

But Kamala Harris wasn’t the only significant loser to come out of November’s election.

Here in Arizona, teachers’ unions and other anti-school choice groups, like Save Our Schools Arizona (SOSAZ), made the 2024 election a referendum on school choice. And they lost big!

Much of their work began earlier this year, when Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs came into legislative session (just like she did in 2023) with her top priority being to regulate the wildly popular Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program out of existence. But it didn’t work. Despite the noise from Hobbs, legislative Democrats, the legacy media, the teachers’ unions, and other anti-school choice groups, only minor changes were made to the ESA program through the budget, with most of it remaining untouched.

This failure fell on the heels of other similar failures.

In 2023, Attorney General Kris Mayes went after the ESA program at the Department of Education. In a public tirade, she falsely claimed that the budget agreement that protected universal school choice would bankrupt the state, despite the expenditure data showing that the ESA program actually saves the state money. But her tirade didn’t stop the Republican budget bill from being signed by Hobbs the same year in another failure to place any limitations on the ESA program.

And let’s not forget what happened in 2022. After then-Governor Ducey signed universal school choice into law in Arizona, the teachers’ unions and groups like SOSAZ threw a hissy fit and immediately began working to stop the new law by gathering signatures for a ballot initiative aimed at overturning ESAs. But they were met every step of the way by an organic movement of parents, teachers, and community members who informed people with the truth and convinced them that it was ok to decline to sign.

Despite this, SOSAZ claimed to have 141,714 signatures, which would have been enough to put the anti-school choice initiative on the ballot. But the group was left with egg on its face when the final signature count revealed that they were actually more than 52,000 signatures short in another failed attempt to overturn ESAs.

You would think that after all these failures, the far-left education community would have learned its lesson. But that’s asking too much.

As we approached the 2024 election, Hobbs’ gubernatorial campaign raised millions to flip the Arizona legislature blue. And the teachers’ unions, combined with anti-school choice groups like SOSAZ, followed in her footsteps. They made it no secret that their top priority was to roll back and eliminate the ESA program—along with other popular school choice programs. That’s why they spent millions to push candidates with a long track record of being anti-school choice like: Christine Marsh, Kelli Butler, and Karen Gresham in Legislative District 4; Judy Schwiebert in Legislative District 2; and Keith Seaman in Legislative District 16—to name a few.

Voters heard the message loud and clear. And how did they respond? By doing the exact opposite.

With the 2024 election now complete, Republicans expanded their majorities in both the Arizona House and Senate. That means school choice is here to stay in our state, and it’s time that the far-left education community comes to grips with this fact.

The reality is that more and more families are recognizing the tremendous benefits of school choice. Over 83,000 students are now enrolled in the ESA program. This has not only saved taxpayers money, but it has strengthened all schools because competition delivers the best product—leading to better students, families, and communities.

If teachers’ unions truly cared about students, they would be on board for this. But instead, groups like the Arizona Education Association responded to the election results by promising “to be the union thugs we were meant to be.” That’s right. After 2 ½ years and multiple failures trying to overturn school choice, they’d rather double down on militant left craziness than learn a lesson.

That’s fine with us. We’ll just keep fighting back with a winning message—that every student throughout our state deserves the best education possible and the funding to make it happen.

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The Left Loses More Ground at the Arizona Legislature

The Left Loses More Ground at the Arizona Legislature

Though most attention was directed at the top of the ticket in the 2024 election, many groups on the Left waged high stakes on flipping Arizona’s barely Republican-controlled legislature.

In the two years since the 2022 election, when Republicans dwindled to 31 members of the 60-member House and 16 members in the 30-member Senate, Democrats have been busily planning and building their election takeover. After sweeping the top 3 statewide offices, including the Governorship, 2024 was the inflection point in the story of how Arizona went from red – to purple – to blue.

But that didn’t happen.

Under the leadership of Governor Hobbs and an orbit of well-funded organizations that raised upwards of $10 million to target key swing districts in Arizona, the Left failed to secure their legislative victories. Instead, the Republican-controlled Arizona House and Senate, in fact, expanded their majorities. Despite being outspent in every single race, Republicans now hold 33 members in the House and 17 members in the Senate, a small but meaningful gain. It’s a disaster for Katie Hobbs, who is already fighting low favorability and criticism by her own party for her inability to best Republican legislative leadership and rack up any wins for the Left’s agenda.

But Hobbs’ rivals certainly can’t blame only Hobbs for their election woes. Issues of public safety, the crisis at the border, and unaffordability and inflation consistently ranked at the top as concerns for voters. And at the end of the day, voters believed Republicans have more grown up and responsible solutions to these problems. In stark contrast is what Democrats were offering: ideas Arizonans have watched ruin our neighbors to the West.

Efforts to educate Arizonans about the real looming threats of allowing the state to fall prey to California policies have made their impact. When Arizonans learn how for years Democrats in the state have pushed to make Arizona a “sanctuary state,” to hand out benefits and driver’s licenses to illegals, to legalize squatting and homeless, to make it impossible to lower taxes, to eliminate school choice, and to create a slew of “climate crimes,” it is no wonder why they would make their bet on a generic Republican lawmaker. The legislative victories in 2024 make it clear that Arizona does NOT want to be California, and Democrats offer only Californication.

This shift to the Right in down ticket races is undergirded by a reddening of the state in general in the last two years, as Republicans have grown their state-wide registration advantage to 8.8%, the largest margin since 2012. These trends are not easily reversed and present an even bigger challenge ahead for the Left, who will need to devote ample resources to securing the Governor’s office in 2026 on top of their legislative ambitions.

Meanwhile, Republicans have mostly resolved their interparty squabbles for now, united under the Trump-mandate, and bolstered by the voter affirmation of their ideas on the economy, the border, and a saner culture.

The new majorities should keep these lessons in mind as they continue to hold the line against the advancement of the Hobbs Agenda and continue to ride the red wave into 2026.

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Prop 140 Committee Burns Millions in a Failed Attempt to California Our Arizona

Prop 140 Committee Burns Millions in a Failed Attempt to California Our Arizona

How do you waste $15 million? Just ask the folks over at the Make Elections Fair Committee. Last week, their insane attempt to force a California-style elections system of ranked choice voting and jungle primaries went down in flames. Prop 140 failed miserably with nearly 60 percent of the electorate voting “No.” And it wasn’t for lack of funding.

With a huge amount of money coming from the pockets of out-of-state billionaires, the Make Elections Fair Committee spent at least $15 million—giving them a 20:1 spending advantage. That’s right. For every $1 spent trying to defeat the initiative, the Prop 140 committee spent $20 trying to pass it! And they still lost by a wide margin!

That’s legendary. If any business idea ever failed that badly, it would be banished and never spoken of again. And that’s exactly what should happen with ranked choice voting and its ugly cousin jungle primaries (which was already overwhelmingly rejected by Arizona voters back in 2012).

Prop 140 was one of the worst ideas ever to be proposed in our great state, and it is fitting that it met its demise from a vast majority of Arizonans. Radical leftists, out-of-state billionaires, and scheming consultants tried to hoodwink voters into adopting this failed system. They spent millions. They potentially misused taxpayer dollars to support the initiative. And they even had to resort to duplicating signatures to qualify for the ballot in the first place.

But voters did their homework. They saw through the misleading and manipulative ads pushing Prop 140. And they said “hell no” to this failed power grab. In fact, our efforts to dismantle Prop 140 were so effective that the Make Elections Fair Committee actually sent an email earlier this week admitting as much. This is a testament to over a year of hard work educating voters on ranked choice voting and why these radical schemes must be defeated.

But it wasn’t just Arizona that rejected this nonsense. Our state joined several other states throughout the country in overwhelmingly rejecting both ranked choice voting and jungle primaries:

On top of this, Measure 2 in Alaska, which repeals the state’s ranked choice voting system, appears to be headed toward passage. And in Missouri, Amendment 7, which proactively prohibits ranked choice voting, passed with almost 70 percent of the vote.

So, how much did all this losing cost? Nationally, groups pushing ranked choice voting spent over $100 million in seven states—only to see it fail in every single one. Could you imagine spending over $100 million without even seeing a hint of a victory?

Clearly, the people have spoken. Ranked choice voting and jungle primaries would be a disastrous transformation of our elections system. Nobody wants it. Now, it’s time for California to keep its destructive policies and systems on their side of the state line.

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!

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