Two Republican senators joined Democrats to kill a GOP proposal that would have banned the use of “unmonitored” ballot drop boxes.
Sens. Paul Boyer and Michelle Ugenti-Rita both voted against House Bill 2238, but for vastly different reasons.
Boyer has killed a number of Republican-backed bills to dramatically change election law, including proposals making it more difficult to vote, that are being pushed under the guise of election integrity but stem directly from false claims of widespread election fraud in 2020.
But Ugenti-Rita’s opposition to HB2238 was because she would rather ban ballot drop boxes outright. She tried to amend the bill to ban the use of all drop boxes in Arizona, but the amendment was rejected: The change wasn’t cleared with the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jake Hoffman, and only eight Republicans voted for it.
Ugenti-Rita said she would not support the bill without her amendment because the bill “codifies” ballot drop boxes into statute when they are only currently mentioned in the Elections Procedure Manual.
“If the goal is to restore confidence in the outcome of an election, then you ban what you think facilitates the manipulation. You don’t capture it on video,” she said while explaining her amendment. “Once you codify this, you’re going to make it the status quo that we now use ballot boxes. Do you understand the whole point is we think it facilitates fraud? And now we’re going to codify it? I wish we would just pause and stop being so reactionary and think about real, authentic solutions.”
Ugenti-Rita is running for Arizona secretary of state, though her campaign appears to be floundering.
Gilbert Republican Sen. Warren Petersen was one of several senators who claimed Hoffman’s original intent was to ban drop boxes like Ugenti-Rita was suggesting, but that doing so could not receive the 31 votes needed to pass the House of Representatives.
Ugenti-Rita did not buy that explanation and said the public deserves “a real solution.”
“Not fake solutions pretending to be one,” she said. “The fact that it may not get out of the House is not a good enough reason.”
Republicans have questioned the purpose of ballot drop boxes when U.S. Postal Service mailboxes already exist for people to drop off their early ballots. The drop boxes exist because the ones that belong to the respective county election department “doesn’t have the intermediary of a postal employee and the post office; it is picked up directly by bi-partisan team of election workers,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer on Twitter.
The drop boxes also save taxpayers money, since every ballot that is dropped off doesn’t cost postage fees. (The cost to return ballots via the mail is paid by county elections officials.) Additionally, voters can drop ballots into drop boxes as late as Election Day, while the deadline for putting ballots in a mailbox is a week earlier to ensure they arrive at the elections department by Election Day.
Ugenti-Rita said those reasons didn’t move her: She claimed that the 80-90% of Arizona voters who vote with early ballots can return them in the mail, vote early in-person or instead vote at a polling place on Election Day.
Boyer said his opposition to the bill was procedural: He said the bill would cost money, and it was his understanding that bills with an appropriation would not move through the process until budget talks gained more steam.
“I don’t know if we are moving money bills these days. I have a few bills on the money bill list that are still stuck in (the House of Representatives) that aren’t getting an up or down vote,” he said.
Boyer also opposed another election bill Monday. That one, sponsored by GOP Rep. Shawnna Bolick, sought to ban emergency voting centers except in cases of war, civil unrest or natural disasters.
The measure, House Bill 2602, comes in response to emergency voting centers that were used in 2020 due to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
Bolick is also running for secretary of state.
The two failed election bills, and at least one other that failed on the floor Monday, highlight an ongoing pattern in the Senate of Republican leaders allowing votes on bills that don’t have enough support to pass. So far, the Senate alone watched 39 bills die on the floor – some may have been reconsidered – which is the most in that chamber since 41 bills died under Senate President Ken Bennett in 2006. The current record is 66 under Senate President Brenda Burns in 1998.
This story originally appeared in the Arizona Mirror, an online nonprofit newsroom. Find more coverage at azmirror.com.
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 1, 2022.
Wide-spread voter fraud is a myth, but those who believe in it will stop at nothing to make others believers too — even if it casts doubt on our elections and brings our representative republic to its knees.
The simple truth is some people cannot rationally deal with the fact that their candidate(s) lost. Would you expect a Superbowl to be played over because the favored team didn’t win? Would you expect a horse race to be run again because your horse was a distant last?
Life is full of winners and losers, but when losers take the loss in stride and start all over again to learn and improve that is the mark of a true winner. True winners don’t quibble and accuse the game of being fixed or try to fix the game to win the next time around.
There are no great conspiracies behind failure. People fail all the time. Why, because we are people. That is life. So, when you lose, suck it up, shake hands with the winner and go back to learning and training for the next time because that is what winners do.
Fraud has been proven in numerous states. Some people don’t care as long as their guy wins. The Georgia primary on Tuesday is now being reviewed as fraudulent.
Germany has gone to hand counting where any citizen can walk in and watch the ballots being counted.
Covid allowed the widespread election changes which brought fraudulent people right along with it. Easy to say “no conspiracies” so why don’t we know who unleashed CV19?
Ever heard of the Clintons? Durham is now exposing widespread fraud by HRC in the 2016 Election and the Russian Collusion hoax.
Our elections have had doubt cast on it for years and we were told much the same as the person below.
It’s time to get to the bottom of it.
MSNBC-“Donald Trump was right. I never thought I’d write those words, but he did warn us that there was a “giant scam” in Michigan involving the state’s election.”
https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search
Don’t expect to find much info on line. It has been scrubbed. I guess that in itself is not a conspiracy?
Even Stacey Abrams filed a lawsuit for election fraud. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/election-lawsuit-backed-by-stacey-abrams-goes-to-trial-in-georgia
And quite honestly 15 months of Joe Biden is all the proof of fraud we need. What conscious person would have done this to our country?
VoterGA released information on Monday before the primary, showing they destroyed nearly 2 million ballots from the 2020 Election. They were supposed to be maintained by federal law.
These were Republicans. But still no fraud.
§20701. Retention and preservation of records and papers by officers of elections; deposit with custodian; penalty for violation
Every officer of election shall retain and preserve, for a period of twenty-two months from the date of any general, special, or primary election of which candidates for the office of President, Vice President, presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, or Resident Commissioner from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico are voted for, all records and papers which come into his possession relating to any application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting in such election, except that, when required by law, such records and papers may be delivered to another officer of election and except that, if a State or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico designates a custodian to retain and preserve these records and papers at a specified place, then such records and papers may be deposited with such custodian, and the duty to retain and preserve any record or paper so deposited shall devolve upon such custodian. Any officer of election or custodian who willfully fails to comply with this section shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
They just passed the sixteen month mark. Let’s all look the other way.
The folks who have no problem with the fact that Trump flushed documents down a toilet are crying about voter fraud!
The GOP would love to make voting as difficult as possible and set themselves up to call all the shots on who gets elected.
Vote blue. Democrats have their faults, but theyre not trying to destroy our democracy.
20,000 AZ ballots were found to be illegally counted in 2020. If we have election fraud we have no democracy, no republic, and no freedoms.
Wake the he’ll up you fools.
True The Vote reported today that AZ had many people involved in election fraud.
The “ping” process of tracking cell phones (which DOJ and FBI regularly use) can report withing three feet of being exact. So orders were placed to ping the drop boxes.
They used the parameter of ten or more visits to drop boxes to be counted.
Maricopa County had 202 mules that stuffed ballot boxes 4242 times.
One phone in Yuma was tracked to 77 different drop boxes.
71 identified mules were in the same building with 3 or more mules also there at the same time.
Drop boxes were the plan to steal the election. “Geofencing” will catch and charge them all.
So that begs the question:
Was Covid created to allow for drop boxes? OR
Did fraudsters figure out that they could cheat using the new drop boxes because of Covid?
Illegitimate President Joe Biden is in trouble.
So, this is why the five swing states stopped counting ballots at 8 pm. This is why they got more cases of ballots being counted after lying about the shutdown of counting. This is why more ballots were delivered over night. This is why observers were forced out of the count and they papered the windows so what they were doing could not be seen.
How do you feel about your democracy now? Who paid these people. It must have been millions of dollars. Who donated that much?
How deeply was the democratic party involved in this fraud?
More election fraud has been found. This time it’s in New Jersey.
33,572 do not have a valid DOB, or have an odd placeholders in that date field. Most issues are in Essex (24%) and Middlesex (17%) counties.
8,239 voters registered multiple times (2x to 6x) at the same address.
6,863 do not show the date they registered. 95% are in Middlesex County.
2,398 voters are over 105 years old, with DOB listed as 1917 or before.
906 have neither a DOB or the date they registered.
Is 50,000+ any indication of widespread fraud?