Lawmakers are already filing boatloads of election reform bills for the upcoming session of the Arizona Legislature — and perhaps the most surprising part is that many of the bills from the far-right aren’t bad.

Sure, election-denying Sen. Wendy Rogers has a bill to force the governor to create a whole elections bureau with broad powers to investigate election fraud (not really his job), but at least we haven’t seen Rep. Shawnna Bolick revive her “to hell with the voters” bill in an attempt to remain relevant in her GOP primary for Secretary of State’s Office. Yet.

In fact, several of the election bills filed by election deniers are seemingly reasonable and responsible.

And since we’ve spent most of the past year shitting on the election fraud crowd, we thought it would be nice to highlight some of the non-batshit election ideas coming from conservative Republicans, including some of Arizona’s batshittyiest lawmakers.

Let’s start with Rogers’ Senate Bill 1043, which would make Election Day (both the primary and the general) a legal holiday off work, alongside New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Independence Day. The bill specifically stipulates that employers must give employees the day off to vote (instead of three hours) and cannot penalize them for using the day. That’s good public policy that will encourage voting!

And what does Rep. Mark Finchem, a Trump-endorsed election denier who’s running for secretary of state, have in common with Democrats from New York and Georgia? They all want to make digital images of ballots public record. Georgia and some Colorado counties did it, and Finchem’s House Bill 2023 would do it here.

While we don’t believe having access to that documentation will actually discourage conspiracy theorists, as the Democrats in other states have argued, if done responsibly, it probably won’t hurt.

The AZ - abc15 - Data Guru @Garrett_Archer

I may not be on @RealMarkFinchem's Christmas card list any longer, but he'll get a slow clap from me for his bill to make the ballot images public. (although, a criticism, making them searchable by precinct is a much bigger lift then one might expect)

Finally, Republican Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, who is not an election denier, but who Democrats once dubbed the Queen of Voter Suppression for her election legislation, has a bill to trigger more (legitimate) recounts.

Currently, state law sets the margin of victory for a recount at 200 votes of fewer for a statewide election. That’s low. Ugenti-Rita’s SB 1008 would increase the threshold to 0.5% of the total votes cast for the top two candidates. (It still wouldn’t be enough to force a recount of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona, which had the tightest margin of any state).

Let’s not kid ourselves that all the election legislation we’ll see this year will be thoughtful and reasonable. There are already lots of bad ideas brewing.

But let’s start the new year with a little optimism. There are election processes Arizona can improve. And good ideas, even from election deniers, should be lauded.

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We mentioned yesterday the pissing match between Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs over the Elections Procedures Manual or “elections bible” — but we later got our hands on a letter in which Gov. Doug Ducey declined to join the pissing match.

Ducey, who like Brnovich is required by law to sign off on the manual, fired off a letter to Hobbs last week saying because she and Brnovich can’t agree, “there is no action for the Governor to take at this time.”

Ducey praised the revisions Hobbs’ office made to the 2019 EPM and applauded the changes in the new manual.

But he essentially wrote that if Hobbs and Brnovich can’t work it out, lawmakers can fill in the gaps between the broadly written laws and how elections officials must carry them out. (God help us.)

One election official we spoke with about the ongoing stalemate essentially shrugged, saying once the politicians finish fighting, elections officials will follow whatever the law is. But they need the law to be clear.

“The only thing we don't want is an environment where there's huge gaps in the election process, and then all of a sudden, it's like, we have to fill in those gaps,” the source said. “That's just an invitation to get sued. Even if we come at it with the best intentions, we just want to be able to point to whatever it is, whether it's a statue or the EPM and just say … we did this exactly according to state law and the EPM.”

New year, same shit: Well, it’s looking like 2020 and 2021 again, despite it being 2022. COVID-19 is spiking in Arizona, with the number of cases this week on a massive upswing. It’s hard for Arizonans to find tests again, too, which feels unfortunately familiar. If you thought we were past all this, nope, some hospitals again are turning away people who need care because of staffing. Here’s a scary-looking chart!

AZ Dept of Health @AZDHS

Today’s #COVID19 dashboard update adds 14,192 cases and no deaths. Some of this total reflects cases not being processed on New Year’s Day; however, the COVID-19 Cases by Day curve shows a significant increase. Learn how you can help reduce the spread: azhealth.gov/COVID19

New year, maybe some new shit: Some schools are putting mask mandates back in place as kids return after winter break, but Gov. Doug Ducey said schools aren’t going to close to ride out the case increases. Astute readers will note that Ducey doesn’t run Arizona’s schools, though he noted on Twitter that the state may help with recruiting substitute teachers and making sure kids can go to a different school if needed. If we had to wager, we’d bet this topic comes up in next week’s State of the State address.

The sunny side: Still, though, there’s a case to be made for optimism about the pandemic and politics, at least if you’re Daily Star columnist Tim Steller. Sure, everything sucks, but it all could suck more, couldn’t it?

Drown your sorrows in losing money: Arizona gamblers went ham since the state legalized sportsbooks, rocketing to record levels, the Republic’s Ryan Randazzo reports. You’ve undoubtedly seen all the commercials offering up free bets — part of the state’s new sports betting law allowed companies to write off those bets, meaning the sportsbooks only had to pay a small amount in operating fees so far.

Silicon Valley giveth, Silicon Valley taketh away: Elizabeth Holmes, who showed up to Arizona hawking her blood tests and convinced lawmakers to legalize them, was convicted on four counts of fraud in a federal court on Monday. Holmes’ trial followed a much-publicized rise and fall and a hilarious courtroom mini-drama wherein her partner’s father tried to bamboozle the press by pretending to be an uninterested party.

Repeal/replace then maybe another referendum: Arizona GOP lawmakers — particularly Rep. Ben Toma and Sen. J.D. Mesnard — say they might try to repeal the tax cut they approved last year and replace it with a different version as a way to circumvent voters’ say on the issue, the Associated Press’ Bob Christie reports. The tax cut approved in the 2021 legislative session was successfully referred to the ballot by opponents, but a repeal/replace would negate the issue1.

The quiet hamlet of Old Town Scottsdale: Scottsdale is cracking down more on short-term rentals in the city that cause problems like frequent loud parties, KJZZ’s Christina Estes reports. Owners of these properties now need to provide emergency contacts to the city, and fines were increased for violations, among other changes.

Always Be Capitalizing: Democratic gubernatorial candidates Marco Lopez and Aaron Lieberman announced their campaigns brought in more funds in December following the discrimination verdict against the Arizona Senate over Katie Hobbs’ firing of a Black female employee, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger reports. The Hobbs campaign hasn’t released updated numbers yet, though.

Nothing better to do?: Phoenix Police made the bizarre choice to pick a fight with vocal advocate for the homeless, Stacey Champion, at the encampment downtown on Monday. Police cited Champion, who documented the altercations on her Twitter feed. The same Phoenix Police are under federal investigation for throwing away belongings of people who live on the street, which is what Champion was trying to prevent from happening in the videos she posted.

Stacey Champion @ChampPR

May be getting arrested

That’s a shame: We might not get that GOP primary between Sens. Kelly Townsend and Wendy Rogers in Legislative District 7 that we were looking forward to yesterday. KJZZ’s Dillon Rosenblatt spotted Townsend’s new statement of candidacy to run in Southern Arizona’s new Congressional District 6, where she does not live.2

Courtesy of Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers, SB 1033 would more harshly punish those who commit crimes during a “riot” or “unlawful assembly.” The bill would also make a city liable for damages caused by a riot if the city council doesn’t let police “respond appropriately” to protect people and property during a riot. And it would beef up penalties for desecrating “venerable objects” like flags and monuments.

But our favorite provision is the one creating a new crime of “mob intimidation” as a Class 1 Misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.

What is mob intimidation, you ask? Technically, it’s three or more people using or threatening to use force to induce another person to do something or believe something.

That sounds a lot like what the group of audit flunkies, candidates and lawmakers have been doing outside of AG Mark Brnovich’s office as they demand he make arrests or else.

Now that the War on Christmas is over, we reporters can turn our full attention to the War on Ducey, which the governor’s lackies assure us is a real war the media is waging.

Their proof? The Republic dared to reach out to Henry Darwin, the former Arizona chief operating officer under Ducey, to ask him for a comment on a story.

Henry Darwin @HenryRDarwin

I don’t normally tweet screenshot text messages. But in the name of transparency, I thought this was worth sharing. I received this from The Arizona Republic. Seems these stories are more like a coordinated vendetta than an honest “investigation,” but I’ll let you be the judge.

Darwin screenshotted a text from Republic investigations editor Michael Braga in which Braga asks him to comment for a story that ties together several of its investigations this year. Their stories included how several of his former staffers took gigs as lobbyists then started hardballing the Department of Revenue on behalf of a client, his former chief of staff’s involvement writing the new gaming compact, a series about Ducey’s freewheeling approach to issuing bonds and the problems with universal licensing.

And sure, there are some legitimate criticisms Team Ducey can make about the investigations and their findings. That’s why reporters reach out to ask questions — so that Ducey and his allies can get their side across before the story goes to print (instead, the modus operandi at the Ninth Floor is often to avoid commenting and then complain about it after the fact).

But a reporter reaching out to say there are “costs and benefits to all these efforts and that’s what I was hoping to talk to you about” ain’t one of those legitimate criticisms.

1

We’re old enough to remember the last time lawmakers did a repeal and replace strategy on an unpopular bill. In 2013, lawmakers approved a massive elections omnibus bill, and when advocates muscled the effort to force a referendum vote on it, Republican lawmakers saw the writing on the wall and voluntarily repealed the bill before the voters could. The next year, they simply re-approved some of the same controversial provisions that were subject to the referendum.

2

While members of Congress are not required to live in their districts, members of the legislature technically are — though the courts have repeatedly offered a laissez faire interpretation of residency requirements.

Arizona Agenda

The Daily Agenda: Not all election law ideas…