The battle is on over whether a referendum to overturn an overhaul of Arizona’s election law will make the ballot.
Opponents of HB 2305, who say it is designed to disenfranchise voters and suppress turnout, told the press that they turned in more than 146,000 signatures last month.
After reviewing the petitions, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office announced yesterday that, after disqualifying some of the petitions, the Protect Your Right To Vote Committee had 139,161 signatures.
The next step: A random sample of 5 percent of the signatures (which comes out to 6,959 signatures) will be selected for review by the various county recorders, who will determine what percentage are valid signatures. That accuracy rating will be compared to number of signatures collected to determine whether the referendum has the necessary 86,405 valid signatures to force an election.
Earlier today, supporters of the law—who maintain that the overhaul was designed to protect against fraud, streamline vote counting on Election Day and prevent sham candidates from third parties from appearing on the ballot—wrote a letter to the Secretary of State in an attempt to strike a number of signatures gathered by four petition passers.
Barrett Marson, a spokesman for the Stop Voter Fraud Committee, said that those petition passers had been found to be ineligible in a Tucson court case earlier this year (which resulted in an initiative to scrap Tucson’s pension system being tossed from the ballot).
But Robbie Sherwood, a political consultant who is working for the Protect Your Right To Vote Committee, said that two of the four people named in the letter did not work for the committee.
He said the committee was prepared to defend the eligibility of the other two petition passers in court.
Both Sherwood and Marson said that election officials had informed them that the Secretary of State’s Office would not be taking action on the Stop Voter Fraud Committee’s call to disqualify the challenged petition passers. Amy Chan, the Secretary of State’s election director, did not return a phone call and email from the Tucson Weekly.
Julie Erfle, who is chairing the Protect Your Right To Vote Committee, questioned how opponents of the referendum knew those four petition passers had been working for the campaign, given that the petitions had not yet been released to the public.
Marston said that the petition passers were seen gathering signatures.
Sherwood said that based on the number of signatures in the random sample that was going out to county election officials, the group would need a 62 percent validity rate to make the November 2014 ballot, according to Sherwood.
“We believe we will be much higher than that,” Sherwood said.
If the referendum passes that threshold, the new election law will be on hold until voters determine whether it should be approved.
Marston said he anticipated a court fight over the validity of the petition signatures once they are released to the public and available for review.
“This the bottom of the second inning and maybe they’re up 2-1,” Marston said. “There’s a long way to go.”
Sherwood said he was confident that the signatures would hold up under review.
“This is not going to work out the way that they want,” Sherwood said. “We did not run this campaign as sloppily as others have before. It is not surprising that they are pulling out all the stops to prevent a vote on this, because we know the public values their right to vote and they’re going to hold the line on this and reject 2305 when it is on the ballot.”
This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 2, 2013.
The last presidential election has proven that voter fraud is a major problem in America’s election process. Anything that can be done to prevent it is a step in the right direction. Voters need to ask themselves: Who are these people who think voter fraud is a good idea, and why do they want it?
This is another brazen attempt to concentrate power in the hands of extremists at the AZ Legislature. If you don’t like to vote, don’t vote, but don’t take initiative power away from the people.
Voters need to ask themselves: Who are these people that are trying so desperately to keep themselves in the Legislature and why do they want this?
The air must be getting thin up there on the grassy knoll. Cat, Your guy lost despite widespread Republican efforts to suppress poor, minority and student voters – so get over it already. Have a nice day.
No honest person would want voter fraud, nor allow such actions to happen by making it easier to happen. How is this law suppressing the vote which is suppose to make sure that there isn’t any funny business going on? After the 2013 elections where there were cases of voter fraud ie Ohio woman voted several times to ensure Mr. Obama returned to office, I see no reason to lack the rules so that even one person gets away with such behavior.
You know, after living in Arizona for 30 years, I have to ask,
How did so many pig-ignorant racists manage to survive to reach adulthood? You all are like lemmings being led over the cliff by people like Jan Brewer, Joe Arpaio and any number of Tea Party throwbacks. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? ARE YOU EVER GOING TO MAKE IT INTO THE 21ST CENTURY OR ARE YOU JUST GOING TO STAY STUCK IN THE DARK AGES?
There’s another problem with HB 2305 that should be of concern to all Arizona voters. This measure not only negatively impacts third party candidates and voters’ rights, it is a disaster for our state’s public initiative process.
HB 2305 creates numerous strict specifications that could enable large amounts of signatures to be thrown out on a technicality. These impediments would make it much more difficult for citizens to get a measure on the ballot.
Arizona’s public initiative process is a constitutional right enacted at statehood in 1912. That same year a citizen ballot measure passed granting women the right to vote. Since then citizen initiatives have been used to help Arizona’s people, lands, and animals. Voters banned leg-hold traps and poisons on public lands, outlawed cockfighting, and prohibited the cruel confinement of pregnant pigs and calves raised for veal.
HB 2305 is not about preventing voter fraud. It is about suppressing voter and citizen initiative rights. Bill supporters are rightfully concerned about the campaign to refer HB 2305 to the 2014 ballot, because citizens will once again reject blatant political attacks on their voting rights.
Catskinner you ignorant slut…. “The last presidential election has proven that voter fraud is a major problem in America’s election process.” Really? Not in Arizona. Secretary of State Ken Bennett earlier this year told a Capitol Hill committee his office uncovered exactly 15 CASES OF VOTER FRAUD out of millions of ballots cast. Hardly a “major problem” and hardly worth tossing out the rights of minority parties and the state’s ballot initiative system.
The bad part of all this is that there was both good and bad in HB2305. But the way the system works, if the initiative gets on the ballot, and the voters approve, the whole thing gets thrown out, and if the initiative fails, we have a law that has roses surrounded by pig sh*t.
Arizona legislators should not bundle up so many separate ideas into a single bill.