The Daily Agenda: Time to vote on voting
There's bad policy, and then there's bad policy ... Complaints beget complaints ... And Gila monsters are mostly chill.
Early this year, Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers drew a line in the sand between sanity and election denialism, declaring that the latter had no place in the Arizona House.
Yesterday, he allowed a half-dozen of Republican-backed election bills to reach the House floor for a vote, but not the ones that election deniers want.
The six bills represent the spectrum of what should be considered up for debate at the Capitol: Some are sound policies that will help instill confidence in elections (for those willing to listen), while others are based on the election fraud narrative but are relatively reasonable public policy nonetheless.
But none of the ideas seek to overturn past or future elections, eliminate early and mail-in voting or promote absurd ideas like one-day, in-person voting.
And in that respect, the Arizona House deserves some praise. Debating policy — even what we’d consider “bad” policy — is fair game. Trying to take away peoples’ ability to choose their own leaders is not.
Some of the bills received support from Democrats. Others failed, though only because not enough Republicans were present to vote for them. We expect to see those bills return and pass.
Here’s a brief synopsis of the bills:
Senate Bill 1008 would increase the margin of victory needed to avoid a recount. Right now, Arizona’s margin is so low, we can only recall two (legitimate) recounts in recent memory. This bill would increase the workload for Arizona’s already-overtaxed elections officials, as VoteBeat’s Jen Fifield notes, but it sure beats a neverending audit.
SB1170 would require the Arizona Department of Game and Fish to offer to register someone as a voter when they receive a hunting license. Lawmakers actually approved the policy last year as part of the budget package that was struck down in “the battle of the BRBs.” It’s a partisan move that Republicans expect to benefit their side, but hey, it’s registering more voters. Even Democratic secretary of state candidate Adrian Fontes likes it.
SB1362 would allow voters to scan their mail-in ballots directly into tabulation machines if they show up on Election Day and show ID. Right now, elections officials face a huge backlog of early mail-in ballots that are dropped off on Election Day and tabulated after the fact. These “late early ballots” are a pain in the ass for elections officials.
SB1477 would require the clerk of the Superior Court in each county to send monthly updates about who has been convicted of a felony and require county recorders to cancel those voter registrations.
SB1013 would require Arizona officials to ask the federal government to change the requirements on the federal voter registration form to include proof of citizenship, as the Arizona form does, unlike the likely unconstitutional tactic to achieve the same goal that lawmakers already approved this year.
And SB1329 would require county elections officials, when possible, to count the remaining ballots awaiting tabulation before they stop tabulating ballots on election night.
But the alt-reality right’s vindictiveness was on full display in the House yesterday as a group of election-deniers attempted to kill SB1329 because it was sponsored by Republican Sen. Paul Boyer, the most vocal Republican senator who stood to his party’s lies about the 2020 election. Republican Rep. John Fillmore and his fellow election deniers voted against the bill, trashing Boyer for failing to pledge fealty to the Big Lie and claiming his bill wouldn’t help solve the problem of election fraud.
And therein lies the rub. As every single court case, partisan audit and independent review has shown, Arizona doesn’t have a widespread problem with election fraud. We have a widespread problem about the perception of election fraud.
Unfortunately, all the recounts and other confidence-boosting mechanisms that lawmakers put in place will never be enough to convince those like Fillmore who simply want to overturn results of elections they don’t like.
Long odds for this year’s ballot: A group called Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom launched an initiative drive to preserve access to abortion in Arizona this week, though the initiative would need a high volume of signatures before July 7, the deadline for ballot measures to make the 2022 ballot, Capitol Media Services’ Howie Fischer reports. As we foreshadowed earlier this month, a ballot measure offers abortion advocates a way to enshrine it in the Arizona Constitution, though we noted an effort wasn’t likely to be successful until 2024, given the time constraints this year. The ballot measure effort underway now would provide access to abortion until a fetus is viable outside the womb or at any point in pregnancy if the health or life of the mother is in jeopardy.
One complaint after another: As we noted yesterday, Arizona Sen. T.J. Shope intends to file an ethics complaint against Sen. Juan Mendez for not coming to work at the Legislature. Shope contends that Mendez is shirking his responsibilities to work for his district, while Mendez claims that Shope’s complaint is a deflection from the investigation into Sen. Wendy Rogers, the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl reports. Mendez and Rep. Athena Salman, who are married, have a newborn and have not attended session in person because of COVID-19 concerns. They told Pitzl they’d come to vote in person on the budget and water legislation.
Dispatch from dairyland: In Wisconsin, where a slate of fake electors attempted to declare Donald Trump the victor of the 2020 election, Democrats are suing, saying the fake electors need to face some kind of consequences for trying to overturn the election, the New York Times reports. Fake electors in other states, including Arizona, filed documents proclaiming Trump’s victory, and while none have faced criminal charges, Congress’ Jan. 6 committee is looking into the fake slates.
Help you help them: A program called the Parent Educator Academy by the nonprofit Arizona Latino Leaders in Education helps parents learn how to help their students succeed in school as a way to improve academic achievement for Latino students, the Republic’s Daniel Gonzalez reports.
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At what again, exactly?: A campaign email from appointed Maricopa County Attorney and GOP candidate for the office Rachel Mitchell claimed that “George Soros is at it again!,” pointing to the progressive funder who has not contributed so far to her opponent, Democrat Julie Gunnigle, in the race to fill the seat, the Phoenix New Times’ Katya Schwenk reports. In a campaign email, Mitchell wrote that Soros and his daughter were behind big donations on the left in prosecutors’ races and that she needed her supporters’ help to “fight off the Soros machine.” Gunnigle’s campaign hasn’t received funds from Soros, though the donor spent big in the county attorney’s race in 2016.
On the ground reporting: As the issue of Title 42 and its potential termination goes through the courts, people seeking asylum in Nogales told KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick that they’re waiting to see how their families will be affected and whether they can cross into the U.S. without being sent back.
If at first you don’t succeed, do it anyway: In the latest in a yearslong saga and after permit setbacks, a mining company called Hudbay Minerals began mining work in the Santa Rita Mountains, which opponents of the mine contend is illegal, the Republic’s Zayna Syed reports.
He could just appoint people: The state’s Psychiatric Security Review Board hasn’t been able to meet to vote on psychiatric patients’ treatment plans since January because the board doesn’t have enough members to constitute a quorum, the Republic’s Stephanie Innes reports. The five-member board, appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey, has three vacancies.
Around the Valley: A developer is building new affordable units in Glendale and Tempe, with the Glendale project being the first to use a housing tax credit program approved by the state in 2021, the Republic’s Corina Vanek reports. Home prices in Gilbert increased nearly 70% since early 2020, the Gilbert Sun News’ Paul Maryniak reports. And in Peoria, a quest to bring a full-service hospitals and more health care jobs continues, the Republic’s Wyatt Myskow reports.
Around the state: Homes on the Navajo Nation get hooked up to electricity through the Light Up Navajo initiative, while the Gila River Indian Community gets a $4.4 million grant from the federal government to beef up broadband internet access, the Arizona Mirror’s Shondiin Silversmith reports.
This pavement is cool: A spray coating on some Phoenix streets helps the streets reflect instead of absorb heat in hopes of alleviating some of the heat island effect that makes it hot as hell here, 12News reports.
We wanted to add more context to yesterday’s bill of the day, which passed the Arizona Senate yesterday with just two votes against it.
Republican. Rep. Michelle Udall’s House Bill 2025 would require schools to adopt policies in public meetings so that parents of current students or prospective students can visit, tour or observe their child’s classroom unless such a visit would “threaten the health and safety of pupils and staff.”
The bill stemmed from parents of children with disabilities who struggled to get access to potential special education classrooms because schools erroneously cited school privacy laws like FERPA.
Karla Phillips-Krivickas, a parent of a child with a disability, wrote about the need for clarification on parental access to classroom tours and visits, particularly for students with disabilities, in this blog post. Thanks to Karla for letting us know the story behind the bill!
We’re really digging Shanti Lerner’s “explaining desert animals” series in the Republic. Last time, it was javelinas. (They’re not pigs, they kinda stink and you should leave them alone.) This week, she’s taking on Gila monster myths after a viral TikTok showed a Tucson man covering a Gila monster with a bucket and escorting the “venomous” reptile out of his garage. The truth about Gila monsters, Lerner writes, is that the so-called monsters’ venom hasn’t killed a human, and they are “pretty docile and easygoing.”
Didn’t get the Bernie Sanders tweet. Love the Gila Monsters story. Thanks.