Grassroots activists are engaged in a struggle for the battleground state of Arizona, with the Legislature proposing dozens of voter suppression bills and activists supporting an Initiative that would restore voting rights in the state.
The Arizona Legislative is under the spell of a radical faction controlled by lobbyists for the private-school, private-prison industry. The faction leaders realize that the only way they can secure the flow of your tax dollars into their pockets is to suppress the vote.
The Initiative, which will go to the printers next week, includes features like election-day registration and automatic voter registration for drivers and high school students. It also stops the Legislature from enacting new voter suppression measures and from giving the state’s electoral votes to any presidential candidate other than the winner.
If you would like to support this effort, please give: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/azvoters#basics
The Initiative will require 240,000 valid signatures collected by the end of June. Arizona Deserves Better is responsible for organizing the volunteer portion of this effort, and coming up with 60,000 signatures. The Arizona Democracy Collaborative is a larger organization responsible for the remainder of the signatures.
While there would be advantages to a national Voting Rights Law, the Senate filibuster is blocking it for now. Getting good voting rights legislation in place in the battleground state of Arizona is an important step.
The Initiative does things like counting ballots postmarked by election day, empowering voters to give their ballots to friends and others to get them in the mail, and allowing election officials to accept private grants necessary to fund elections.
Arizona is in a unique place to act because its founders produced a Constitution in 1912 that allows the people Direct Democracy, the right to vote enactments of the Legislature up or down through a Referendum, the right of the people to create their own laws through the Initiative process and the right to recall sitting officials. Unfortunately, the federal Constitution prohibits recalling U.S. Senators.
The Initiative is an important step in turning back 50 years of radical rightwing attempts to govern the country by suppressing the vote. The Initiative limits how much lobbyists can give Legislators, limits campaign contributions, and supports public funding of campaigns.
If you would like to volunteer, please reach us at: https://secure.everyaction.com/eYVHBAu8GkebyK9grQc_JQ2
We are working with another group called Stop Dark Money, which has another initiative that will limit the influence of anonymous donations in politics. If you would like to visit their website, you can reach them at: Stop Dark Money.com