Just before adjourning the current session, Arizona legislators in Phoenix approved the most sprawling bill yet to suppress the vote in 2022. Incredibly, the bill authorizes invisible markings on ballots that could allow “auditors” to determine for whom individual Arizonans voted.
Now signed by the Governor, SB1819 is a baggy omnibus that contains many seemingly unrelated items: there are new provisions for dog racing; for the governor’s ability to declare a disaster; and new regulations prohibiting the current Secretary of State (who is a Democrat) from pursuing election-related lawsuits. This last regulation will lift, however, with the inauguration of Secretary Katie Hobbs’ successor, whom state Republicans hope will be of their own party.
Arizona Republicans have been in a froth about the 2020 election results. After the state party censured Cindy McCain for her support of President Biden, along with the afore-mentioned Governor Ducey for certifying the results of the Presidential election, Republican state legislators followed the example of Georgia Republicans in turning to election law itself in order to make it much more difficult to vote in Arizona—especially for voters of color.
One law signed by Governor Ducey removes voters from the extremely popular Permanent Early Voter List if they miss elections or happen to vote in person (getting back on the list requires ejected voters to re-apply in writing).
Another restricts the ability of voters to verify their ballot if it is falsely challenged. Yet another reduces sharply the support Arizona voters enjoyed in the last election—for instance, ballot drop-off boxes and even water provided to those waiting in line to cast a ballot—by curtailing permissible funding sources for these measures.
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All of this is taking place as Arizona Republicans await results for their audit of the 2020 election results, undertaken by a private company called CyberNinjas, the CEO of which is on record for promoting the falsehood that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Aghast at the changing political identity of the state, Arizona Republicans have opted to discredit, and where possible, prohibit, the Arizona vote.
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Arizona is ground zero in what will expand to a nationwide fight either to erode or preserve the ability of many Americans to vote and to make sure their vote is counted.
The citizens’ action group Arizona Deserves Better has engaged the task of putting these voter-suppression bills to popular referendum on the 2022 ballot in Arizona. In order to do so the group must gather 118,000 signatures of registered Arizonans within 90 days from the adjournment of the Legislature. This is Herculean task made more difficult by the fact that temperatures in Arizona have already reached 110-plus degrees.
Can you support this effort to defend the vote in this newly-blue state?
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The fight to defend the vote in Arizona is the fight to defend democracy itself in the United States. Having been transformed by Trump into a caucus too radical to attract a winning collation of voters, the GOP is now audaciously suppressing the vote itself. If they are successful in Arizona, they can re-take the 50/50 Senate, since one of Arizona’s seats will be up for grabs in 2022.
But in an even greater sense, the quashing of democracy in Arizona will signal the outset of a new national strategy for the Republican Party: to make it more difficult for Americans everywhere to vote.
Please donate here to help us defend the right to vote in Arizona and everywhere:
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https://arizonadeservesbetter.com