Arizona’s Far Right-Wing has gone absolutely batshit crazy in its attack on voters, filing court cases against mail voting and putting a measure on the ballot that would sharply reduce voting. They paused only briefly to censure one of their own ultra-Trump members who called them all Communists.
But don’t worry, with your help, we’ve got this. We are circulating petitions so voters will have a chance in November to enact the Arizona Fair Vote Act, which protects voting rights.
The state Republican party, led by extremist Kelli Ward, filed a lawsuit saying the state Constitution prohibits early voting and mail voting. This is a pretty interesting claim considering Arizona has had no-excuse mail balloting for 30 years and 90% of the voters in the state use it. This is what the state Constitution actually says, “Section 1. All elections by the people shall be by ballot, or by such other method as may be prescribed by law; Provided, that secrecy in voting shall be preserved.” The Founding Mothers of democratic government in Arizona, creating our Constitution in 1912, did not give our modern-day right-leaning justices much to work with.
The Legislature put a referendum on the ballot which would require mail ballots to have either the date of birth of the voter, their drivers license number, the last four digits of their Social Security number of their Voter ID. People will not be excited about having this information floating around in the mail.
I’m sorry to say that Legislators heard that similar restrictions were causing up to 30% of ballots to be rejected in some Texas counties. So they said, “Whooo – Hah, let’s do it.”
Adding to the pressure as they consider more than 100 voter suppression bills, is the fact that the campaign for the Arizona Fair Vote Act is ramping up. Arizona Deserves Better is a grassroots organization responsible for gathering 60,000 petition signatures to put the measure on the ballot. We would appreciate your support.
Our new field director, Joel Williams, arrives in the state late this week. He will need five regional coordinators to get the campaign running in the Phoenix area, Tucson and the southern part of the state, and in northern Arizona. We need $20,000 by March 15 to get this in place. Please give secure.actblue.com/...
We already have 1,200 petitions in the field and many energetic volunteers. If you would like to help secure.everyaction.com/... .
The ballot Initiative repeals some old voter suppression measures, give Arizona one of the best voting laws in the United States and protects voters and the state’s electoral votes into the future. It also reforms campaign finance and reduces the influence of lobbyists.
A right-wing commentator said the Initiative is a state version of the federal HR-1, which has been blocked by the filibuster. While this is not really correct, I’ll take it as a compliment.
Our partners, the Arizona Democracy Collaborative, are responsible for handling the paid portion of the signature campaign, to get us to the needed 240,000 valid signatures. People in Arizona will be seeing them soon.
Arizona has enjoyed a rift developing between the toxic fringe and the hyper-toxic lunatic fringe as the state Senate voted 24-3 to censure state Sen. Wendy Rogers (R-Interstellar Space). She appeared at a White Nationalist convention and supported war criminal Vlad Putin, but the State Senate really pulled its punches and did NOT censure her for "supporting White nationalism and Putin." Instead, they just hit her for being nasty to her colleagues and threatening to destroy them if they voted against her. The only reason they got most of the Republicans to vote for the censure was by taking out language about anti-Semitism and racism. Rogers called the members of her caucus, who would not be out of place in any legislative chamber in the antebellum South, “Communists.” Just another day at the office for Arizona’s legislative majority. But it was useful in that it was 20 minutes when the Legislature was not attacking the right to vote.
Arizona is one state pursuing a major Voting Rights measure this year. Michigan appears to be the other one. Though the Wolverine State has two Initiatives, in Arizona a broad coalition was able to hammer out a single voting Initiative. We hear that Ohio could be the third state with voting rights on the ballot this year, but we’re not seeing much from the Buckeye State so far.
Also involved in the petition struggle in Arizona are our friends at Stop Dark Money and Healthcare Rising, which is doing some really cool things with medical debt.
Visit our new website at AZFE.org
