In a new ruling, Republican lawmakers in Arizona are now legally allowed to discard documents after 90 days. The Washington Post reports that legislators from both the Senate and House can destroy any documents, including emails, texts, etc., on personal phones after three months, exempting themselves from state public records law.
According to the White Mountain Independent, if these rules had been in place in the months after the 2020 election, the public would never have been privy to the Arizona lawmakers who attempted to trash President Joe Biden’s win.
The rule would have shielded the public from knowledge of emails Virginia Thomas, spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent to GOP House and Senate members urging them to forget Biden’s Electoral College delegates in exchange for a fake group of GOP delegates.
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The House changed its public records rules Tuesday, and the Senate changed them Wednesday. The new rules give broad exemptions as to which records should be retained and for how long.
David Bodney, a lawyer who has represented the Arizona Republic in open-records litigation over the 2020 election review, told the Post, “I think it is petty, vindictive, and contrary to the plain interests of transparency and government accountability in Arizona.”
The investigation into the way that the GOP handled the 2020 election came largely from a review of Arizona’s records law via the Cyber Ninjas. Those records illuminated much of what we know about that election’s irregularities.
“It does seem like they’re just trying to find a way to be able to operate in the dark, which is incredibly anti-democratic. It’s anti-American, quite frankly,” Heather Sawyer, American Oversight’s executive director, told the Post. The rule change benefits all lawmakers at the expense of ordinary voters of all political stripes, she said; Arizonans won’t be able to find out what legislators are doing behind the scenes, regardless of their party affiliation.
And Arizona continues to play fast and loose in the state’s elections. The Guardian reports that an elections director in a rural county in the state who refused to certify the state’s 2022 elections resigned recently, citing death threats.
Lisa Marra, 59, the appointed elections director in deeply Republican Cochise County, Arizona, has served since 2017. She’s been a vocal supporter of elections in the state and received GOP backlash because of it.
According to the Post, during last November’s elections, Marra urged her GOP-lead county board members to certify the election despite losses by Republican candidates, and conspiracy theorists held up the process. The election was eventually certified, but only after a court order forcing them was filed.
Marra’s attorney wrote that her client faced “outrageous and physically and emotionally threatening” working tenor and “objectively difficult and unpleasant working conditions.” Her lawyer additionally said that Marra was told that in February, the board intended to have a meeting “where local election deniers will present testimony as ‘experts’ on election security and the use of voting machines.”
The fact that Republican-led states such as Arizona are attempting to subvert elections and legally allowing lawmakers to hide documents is a frightening reality. Regardless of party, the shady ethics of election officials is a red flag that cannot be overlooked or overstated. After all, the future of democracy and our elections depend on it.
Listen to the latest episode of The Downballot for an in-depth analysis of the 2024 Arizona Senate race and the implications of Kyrsten Sinema's re-election decision. Special guest Victoria McGroary, the Executive Director of BOLD PAC, will also discuss the efforts to prevent losses among Hispanic voters and the fight against disinformation in Spanish language media.