If you read The Skinny in this week’s print edition, you learned about the effort to repeal the election overhaul that lawmakers passed last year. It’s a complicated story, but here’s are the basics: The various provisions of HB 2305—making it a crime to gather early ballots from voters, tossing voters from the permanent early-voter list, and creating new hurdles for citizens initiatives as well as third-party candidates—were outrageous enough that a referendum drive has put the law up to vote of the people this November.
The Republicans who support the law evidently believe voters will agree to these changes in election law (and they certainly don’t want to campaign in support of something that’s going to be called the “Voter Suppression Act” in TV ads all through the fall), so they now want to repeal the law. It’s not that they have realized they have over-reached; instead, they just plan to pass the provisions separately in order to thwart the referendum drive but still get their way.
Step one is HB 2196, which was scheduled for a hearing yesterday in the House Judiciary Committee. But the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, postponed the hearing after a crowd of angry citizens and hungry TV journalists showed up at the hearing.
Stay tuned. Farnsworth said he’d be bringing the bill back next week.
Robbie Sherwood, executive director of ProgressNow Arizona and a spokesman for the Protect Your Right to Vote Committee, promised to return as well.
“I don’t blame politicians for wanting a less intense spotlight for their efforts to stick it to voters, but the public is outraged by how these efforts to curb participation in elections and we won’t go away,” Sherwood said in a press release.
This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2014.
Suppression of voter rights and civil rights in Pima county isn’t a problem, it’s an art form. Keeping the same cronies makes as much sense as keeping the same potholes.
It needs to be repealed by the legislature. HB 2305 was mostly a load of crap, but had some very good things in it.
If the voters repeal it, the good is thrown out with the bad. This way, each provision will have to stand or fall on its own.
The legislators should be encouraged to up-grade our state constitution with a
definition of every individual voter’s “Full Voting Rights”. After the constitution
is up-graded… then up-grade the state election laws/procedures that will honor
and respect all 24 or more components of our “Full Voting Rights”.
All of Arizona’s voters do NOt have “Full Voting Rights”…yet.
Thanks and Good Luck,
Frank Henry
Full Voting Rights Advocate
fmhenry4@netzero.com