by admin | Aug 24, 2023 | Elections, News and Updates
The people of Arizona deserve elections that are both accessible and secure—where it is easy to vote and hard to cheat. It is the duty of the legislature to pass bills that ensure this, the Governor to sign those bills into law, and the Attorney General to enforce those laws.
But the Secretary of State’s role is different. This elected official is supposed to provide an Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) that provides impartial direction to county recorders to ensure uniform and correct implementation of election law. But just like his predecessor in this role before him (now-Governor Katie Hobbs), our current Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has filled his EPM with unlawful provisions. (Maybe Adrian Fontes just really likes the possibility of being sued.)
Fontes’ EPM Is in Direct Conflict with HB 2492
Only U.S. citizens should be voting in our elections. That’s why the Arizona legislature passed, and then-Governor Ducey signed into law, HB 2492 in 2022. This law cracks down on state voter registration applications that do not include proof of citizenship. It requires counties to check multiple databases for evidence of citizenship when an individual submits a federal application without proof. And it requires counties to reject those federal applications if they find evidence that the individual is, in fact, not a U.S. citizen. Additionally, it makes proof of citizenship a requirement to vote early by mail in any election and to vote in Presidential elections.
All of this is intended to safeguard our state’s voter rolls, and as Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes should be producing an EPM that is consistent with this law. But Chapter 1 of his EPM draft is riddled with provisions that are in direct conflict with the requirements enshrined by this duly enacted bill. And that’s not the only problem.
The EPM Draft Conflicts with New Voter Maintenance Laws
In 2022, the Arizona legislature also enacted several new requirements—like HB 2243—to ensure regular voter list maintenance is completed by counties in a uniform, nondiscriminatory manner so that only qualified voters are actively registered to vote. But once again, Fontes’ EPM contains provisions that conflict with the requirements under these new laws.
For example, in one footnote in the drafted EPM, Fontes aims to prohibit counties from using the SAVE database for any list maintenance purpose. But this conflicts with A.R.S § 16-165(I) which requires the county recorder to compare those who are registered to vote who have not provided satisfactory evidence of citizenship with the SAVE database.
Then, there’s the issue of the Active Early Voter List. In 2021, lawmakers passed, and then-Governor Ducey signed into law, SB 1485. This law requires county recorders to remove any voters registered on the Active Early Voter List who have not cast a ballot during two consecutive election cycles and have not responded to notification from the recorder that they wish to continue to participate. So, how does the EPM handle this? It simply ignores it, which as Senate President Warren Petersen pointed out perpetuates the issue of ballots being sent to homes of voters who may have moved or don’t want to participate in the process any more—therefore allowing an increased opportunity for ballots to get into the hands of unintended individuals.
Other Issues in the EPM
If those issues aren’t enough, Fontes isn’t done yet. His draft EPM doesn’t mention any provisions or procedures related to SB 1362, which was passed and signed into law in 2022 and establishes a framework for tabulating early ballots that are dropped off on election day. It directly conflicts with A.R.S § 16-127 which established that individuals who have not provided satisfactory evidence of citizenship are not eligible to vote in Presidential elections. And it conflicts with the plain language of A.R.S § 16-550 which requires the signature on the affidavit envelope for active early voters to be compared to the signature of the voter in the voter’s registration record.
The list of issues is plentiful, and we could go on and on. But it’s important to note that Fontes attempted to rush this version of the EPM through by deliberately shortening the typical public comment period from one month to two weeks in hopes that most of this wouldn’t get caught by the public. But the Arizona Free Enterprise Club was on top of it and submitted public comments on these issues and more before the shortened deadline.
Now, Adrian Fontes needs to take the necessary actions to fix the EPM and produce a neutral one that is consistent with state law. And if he doesn’t, the Arizona State Senate should follow through on its threat to take legal action against him.
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by admin | Aug 11, 2023 | Elections, News and Updates
Clean and accurate voter rolls are a cornerstone to safe and secure elections. And they are required by both state and federal law. Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) specifically obligates states to conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters due to death or change of residence. The U.S. Supreme Court even backed this up in its 2018 decision in the case Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute.
But Arizona’s current Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and its former Secretary of State (now Governor) Katie Hobbs have failed to perform the necessary voter list maintenance. And right now, 14 Arizona counties are in violation of Section 8 of the NVRA.
Four Arizona Counties Appear to Have More Registered Voters Than Voting-Age Adult Citizens
A simple comparison of the data gathered from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017-2021 American Community Survey with the most up-to-date count of registered voters available from the Arizona Secretary of State is quite eye-opening. When you compare the registered voter count to the survey, it shows that Apache, La Paz, Navajo, and Santa Cruz Counties all have greater than 100% voter registration!
This means that in each of those counties there are more registered voters than eligible voters, and last time we checked, that’s impossible. Clearly, Arizona’s voter rolls are not being properly maintained, but this data alone isn’t the only cause for alarm.
Nine Arizona Counties Have Suspiciously High Voter Registration Rates
According to the Census Bureau, the current national voter registration rate is 69.1 percent. And Arizona’s voter registration rate was 76.4 percent in 2020 and 68.6 percent in 2018. Yet somehow, nine counties in Arizona currently have voter registration rates that exceed 90 percent of their citizen voting-age populations, including: Cochise, Coconino, Gila, Maricopa, Mohave, Pima, Pinal, Yavapai, and Yuma. On top of that, Graham County also outpaces the national voter registration rate with over 80 percent voter registrations.
If you’re keeping count, that means 14 of Arizona’s 15 counties have abnormally high—or in four particular instances, impossibly high—voter registration rates. Discrepancies like this can’t possibly be attributed to above-average voter participation. Instead, they are clear evidence of Arizona’s failure to provide accurate voter rolls, and something must be done.
Adrian Fontes Has 90 Days to Comply with the NVRA
Retaining voter rolls that are bloated with ineligible voters harms the electoral process, heightens the risk of election fraud, and undermines public confidence in elections. That’s why Arizona Free Enterprise Club President Scot Mussi, in partnership with the Honest Elections Project, sent a pre-litigation notice letter to Secretary of State Adrian Fontes earlier this week. Fontes is being given 90 days to correct the violations we identified and must remove anyone from the official voter list who is ineligible to vote in a county, including those who changed residence, died, or are presently incarcerated.
If he fails to comply, Fontes will face a federal lawsuit because having accurate voter rolls is imperative to conducting an election with integrity. And if Adrian Fontes is going to take his job as Secretary of State seriously, he must secure our elections and ensure that Arizona voters are confident in the results, regardless of the outcome.
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by admin | Jul 14, 2023 | Elections, News and Updates
Bad ideas never seem to go away. And in politics, they often get recycled every 10 years because consultants need to make money. That’s why it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that we’re seeing another push for jungle primaries in the state of Arizona.
If you’re not familiar with a jungle primary (or open primary), it is an election in which all candidates run in the same primary regardless of their political party. The top two candidates who receive the most votes then advance to the general election.
Several years ago, California adopted this “solution” under the guise that it would result in more moderate policies and candidates being elected there. Go ahead and read that again. When you think of California, do you think of a state with moderate policies and candidates? That should tell you all you need to know about jungle primaries. And yet, now we have groups like Save Democracy telling us that we need to act more like California to improve Arizona. No thank you!
Of course, Arizona voters already said as much back in 2012 when they overwhelmingly rejected this absurd form of voting. But despite this, Save Democracy has decided to pursue a ballot measure to institute jungle primaries after it realized that its work to bring ranked-choice voting (RCV) to Arizona was a disorganized mess.
Some may be thinking: does this mean that the campaign for ranked-choice voting in Arizona is over?
No! (You may want to get your popcorn ready for this one.) While Save Democracy has given up on RCV, a group called Voter Choice Arizona (VCA) has not. Clearly upset with Save Democracy stabbing them in the back and pulling their support, VCA is now openly feuding with its former ally in Save Democracy after it was forced to clarify that they are 100% committed to putting a ranked-choice voting measure on the 2024 ballot.
On top of all this, the Republican-led legislature already voted to send a measure to the 2024 ballot that would give Arizona voters a chance to further protect our primary election system from ranked-choice voting and jungle primaries. So, if you’re keeping score at home, that means we could have three potential ballot initiatives in 2024 dealing with ranked-choice voting or jungle primaries.
This may all seem confusing, but no less confusing than ranked-choice voting where:
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- Candidates are listed on the ballot, and voters rank each candidate in order of preference.
- If a candidate wins 50% or more of the first-preference votes, he or she is declared the winner.
- If no one wins in the first round, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated.
- In the next round, voters who selected the eliminated candidate as their first choice then have their vote counted for their second preference.
- The process continues until one candidate eventually wins the majority of the adjusted votes.
Jungle primaries will cause many of the same problems—leaving Arizona voters confused and potentially resulting in candidates from the same party being on the ballot in the general election. And that doesn’t even get into the impact all this could have on our voting machines that have had enough trouble under the current system.
The reality is that we’ve already seen significant issues with ranked-choice voting in Alaska. And jungle primaries in California have resulted in fewer candidate choices and even more far left radical politics. We can’t let that happen here. Arizona voters already rejected jungle primaries once. Now, they should shoot them down again.
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 | Jun 22, 2023 | Elections, News and Updates
For years, Arizona has been a target of out-of-state special interest groups that want to put their radical ideas in our state. The process usually goes something like this.
- Liberal groups from outside Arizona take an issue that is unpopular with the electorate, like tax hikes.
- They come in and hire an army of paid circulators to flood the streets of Phoenix and Tucson to collect their signatures—hardly bothering with the rest of the state.
- Bad policy and sweeping reforms are placed on our ballots with only a small fraction of the state’s support.
One of the most recent examples of this was Prop 208, which narrowly passed in 2020. Out-of-state teachers’ unions spent more than $30 million over four years in their effort to buy the largest tax hike in history—lying to Arizona voters to get signatures and lying to get the slimmest of majorities to approve it. Had it not been for the court system killing Prop 208 once and for all, Arizona would be a high tax state today.
Now, a proposed constitutional amendment sponsored by Arizona Senator J.D. Mesnard would put a stop to this abuse. SCR 1015 would require that any initiative looking to qualify for the ballot is required to collect signatures from all 30 legislative districts in the state. This means that anyone who thinks they have a good idea that should be on the ballot won’t be able to rely solely on signatures from large cities like Phoenix and Tucson. They will also need to talk to voters in Buckeye, Kingman, Yuma, Wilcox, and more.
This is a commonsense reform that would require a percentage of registered voters from each legislative district to express their support of a ballot initiative before it could appear on a ballot.
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- Signatures from 10 percent of the qualified electors from each legislative district would be needed to propose any statewide measure.
- Signatures from 15 percent of the qualified electors from each legislative district would be needed to propose any constitutional amendment.
- Signatures from 5 percent of the qualified electors in each legislative district would be needed to propose a statewide referendum.
Most other states that have an initiative process also have a geographic signature distribution requirement just like this one. And it’s time that Arizona has one as well to make sure that our initiative process is for all Arizonans—not out-of-state special interests.
SCR 1015 will be on the ballot in November 2024, and as you might expect Democrats like Rep. Athena Salman are already busy gaslighting the people of Arizona (while fully mased, of course). And just like with Prop 132 last year, out-of-state unions and liberals will look to spend big to defeat the measure. But Prop 132 passed, which means that a 60 percent majority vote of the people is now required on any ballot measure that seeks to raise your taxes. Let’s ensure that SCR 1015 meets the same fate so that a more representative group of Arizona voters has a say in what appears on the ballot.
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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by admin | Jan 26, 2023 | Elections, News and Updates
This past November’s election in Arizona was a complete disaster. Not only did voting machines fail across Maricopa County, but many voters were suppressed and disenfranchised. Right now, we should be working toward solutions that restore voter confidence and ensure election integrity. But believe it or not, some national groups and liberal billionaires are planning to come to Arizona to run a ballot initiative that would make our elections even more complicated.
It’s called ranked-choice voting, and if you haven’t heard of it, it works a little something like this.
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- Candidates are listed on the ballot, and voters rank each candidate in order of preference.
- If a candidate wins 50% or more of the first-preference votes, he or she is declared the winner.
- If no one wins in the first round, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated.
- In the next round, voters who selected the eliminated candidate as their first choice then have their vote counted for their second preference.
- The process continues until one candidate eventually wins the majority of the adjusted votes.
Complicated? Yes. Confusing? You bet. How do you think voting machines that had enough trouble with our current system would handle this? And if you thought it took awhile to get results during this past election, can you imagine how long it would take with a ranked-choice voting system in place?
Not surprisingly, it’s primarily being pushed by Democrats to prevent Republicans from being elected, which happened last year in Alaska after the state adopted the system in 2020. Despite nearly 60 percent of votes cast for a Republican on all first-choice ballots, Democrat Mary Peltola would go on to defeat Republican Sarah Palin in a special election House race last August. This marked the first time since 1973 that a Democrat would represent Alaska in the lower chamber.
But that’s not the only problem. Ranked-choice voting has also proven itself to be unreliable.
Just look at what happened in Alameda County, California. Nearly two months after the November election, the county announced that it counted the ballots incorrectly. While most races went unaffected, it did change the outcome in an Oakland School Board race, leaving the certified winner to have to give up his seat to the third-place finisher, who actually won.
On top of all this, a ranked-choice voting system brings longer ballots, which means you can forget about voting on one ballot anymore. (You would think that this dramatic rise in the amount of paper needed would throw the Green New Deal people into a tailspin, but they don’t seem to care as long as they’re rigging the system in their favor.) It would also likely put an end to our current primary process, and it would result in ballot exhaustion. That’s right. If a voter overvotes, undervotes, or only ranks candidates who are eliminated from contention, their ballot is discarded and doesn’t count toward the end result. A study published in 2015 that reviewed four elections in Washington State and California, actually found that as a result of ballot exhaustion, the winner in all four elections received less than a majority of the total votes cast.
The supporters of this absurd process claim they want free and fair elections, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. They want to find any way they can to manipulate our election system in their favor. Now, as national groups arrive in Arizona to push ranked-choice voting in our state, it’s up to you to decline to sign their petitions. And it’s on our Republican legislature to take action to stop this system or any other similar system from being enacted in the state.
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 | Jan 17, 2023 | Elections, News and Updates
From their pulpit at press conferences, they shrugged off questions and concerns about the potential for long lines on election day and whether they would have their voting centers properly equipped. For weeks, the mainstream media blasted out to Arizonans that they are competent election officials, about to implement the “safest, most secure” election in history.
Then it all came crumbling down in what was one of the worst election days in recent history. Long lines, yes. But more importantly, critical equipment failures resulted in the complete inability to tabulate ballots at dozens of voting locations for several hours. It didn’t stop there. The issues persisted in the coming weeks for Maricopa County, who responded to requests for information with hostility. And then, we found out Pinal County (following major problems in their primary election) had miscounted hundreds of ballots, shrinking the already miniscule gap between the candidates for attorney general.
Two months later, these issues are still being litigated. But regardless of how the election contests being pursued by Kari Lake and Abe Hamadeh turn out, nothing changes the fact that Maricopa and Pinal Counties bungled the election.
Going forward, Arizona must learn from what happened, craft meaningful solutions, and focus efforts on productive goals ahead of 2024.
We Need a Legitimate Investigation into Maricopa and Pinal Counties
What happened in Maricopa and Pinal Counties is nothing short of a disaster. Internal reviews or nontransparent “audits” conducted by the counties themselves won’t cut it. We need a thorough and transparent investigation into what led to the various issues in these counties to find out what really happened. Why did so many printers malfunction the morning of the election? Why did it take more than half the day to fix them? Why were early ballots not counted before they were transported from the voting centers? These and numerous other questions demand real answers.
At this time, the state legislature is the only entity capable of sufficiently investigating the election day failures. Lawmakers may look to do it themselves, but it may make more sense to hire an independent investigator to conduct the work. An ex-prosecutor or judge would make the most sense given their experience with conducting investigations and executing subpoenas (which the legislature has the authority to do). The cloud surrounding the election offices in Maricopa and Pinal won’t be lifted until a thorough and transparent investigation is completed.
We Must Defend and Enforce New Election Integrity Laws
It’s important to remember that in the last two legislative sessions, lawmakers and the governor did enact dozens of meaningful election reforms. Just last session, two of the most critical were signed. Together these two laws will ensure only qualified, U.S. citizens are able to register to vote (HB2492) and that only eligible voters remain registered by requiring regular voter roll maintenance (HB2243). Both laws went into effect on January 1st of this year.
Unsurprisingly, the Left (including the Biden administration) has filed multiple lawsuits in federal court to stop these laws that will prevent illegals from voting and clean up the voter rolls from impacting the 2024 election. HB 2492 and HB 2243 must be staunchly defended in court, but that is not likely to happen with Democrat Kris Mayes currently occupying the office of attorney general.
Recently, the Republican National Committee successfully intervened in the case, meaning the laws, now in effect, still have some protection. But the better news is that Republicans retained their majorities in both legislative chambers. Now we need them, the individuals who passed these bills into law, to intervene in these lawsuits as well and protect their work to ensure only qualified individuals are registered and voting in our elections.
We Should Proactively Litigate to Hold Election Officials Accountable
What can’t be denied from this past election is that counties and their election officials are acting lawlessly when it comes to implementing elections. It’s not always that we need new laws or reforms to existing statutes. First and foremost, what we need is for current laws to be enforced.
The Left has been involved in proactive lawfare for years, making every election cycle more and more litigious as they sue over every commonsense reform conservatives enact. Most importantly, these liberal groups do not wait for the election to start filing lawsuits. Unlike our side, the bulk of their legal activity occurs outside of election season, seeking change through the courts while most are not paying attention.
Our side must start engaging in this fight as well, to ensure that existing laws—like maintaining chain of custody for early ballots between the voting center and central count facility, not allowing early ballots to be injected into the system at a private vendor (Runbeck), and others that were potentially ignored in 2022—are faithfully adhered to moving forward.
We Need to Continue Pushing for Good Election Integrity Policy at the Legislature
Katie Hobbs is not likely to sign any good election integrity proposals, but that doesn’t mean the legislature should stop doing its job—legislating and governing on behalf of the voters who elected them.
For example, Arizona voters are tired of the weeks-long tabulation process, with drops of new ballots here and there over the course of two or more weeks. We deserve to know, or at least have a good idea, who has won on election night. Last session, Senator J.D Mesnard tried to accomplish that with SB1362 to require counties to tabulate the early ballots of voters who appear at a voting location on election day after showing ID. The bill did pass and was signed into law, but through the process it became permissive, simply allowing the counties to offer the opportunity to voters.
This session, lawmakers should mandate it. That would provide voters more options for casting their ballots, increase the number of voters showing ID before casting a ballot, and increase confidence and transparency in the process by eliminating the possibility of those ballots being adjudicated. This would allow voters to tabulate their own ballots themselves and work toward the goal of obtaining results on election night.
Reforms like this increase both access and security, making it easy to vote and hard to cheat. It is a commonsense proposal. There are and will be others too, and Republicans should work to get them passed and on to Katie Hobbs’ desk.
Whether it’s in litigation, through the legislature exercising its oversight authority, or lawmakers crafting commonsense reforms, there is still work to be done. And there is ample opportunity for Arizona voters to have secure elections in which they have confidence in the results, regardless of the outcome.
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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