Tucson City Councilman represents Ward 5. The Weekly welcomes guest commentaries from elected officials, candidates for office and anyone with something important to say. Send yours to executive editor Jim Nintzel at jimn@tucsonlocalmedia.com.
Richard Fimbres is the Councilmember for Tucson’s Ward 5. This nation is facing a health crisis, with the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 1,300,000 cases and more than 80,000 dead while Arizona had more than 12,176 cases with 594, who passed away from COVID-19.
Throughout our nation, many primary elections had either been postponed or canceled outright. One state, Wisconsin, still held their primary election, for which 52 citizens of Wisconsin, tested positive for COVID-19, after trying to exercise their right to vote.
We know that this election year will be different and changes are needed for the voting process. We cannot risk our citizens for the old practice of going to the polling places.
Arizona offers voters the option of signing up to receive their ballot in the mail, using the Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL). Voters must fill out the form and send it in.
With this COVID-19 health crisis and pandemic, people have raised questions and concerns about voting at a polling location, social distancing, occupancy at a polling place, and whether the voting equipment and ballots have been sanitized.
The vote by mail process answers these questions and addresses these concerns, a vote-by-mail election process, for which Tucson has, and is safe.
In 2009, a consolidated election was held with several governmental entities and measures on ballots for voter consideration. Polling places were changed, causing voter confusion which drove down turnout for that election for all involved.
In 2011, while we were still in the Great Recession, I brought forward a proposal to have the City of Tucson conduct its primary and general elections using an all, vote-by-mail system, for which my colleagues on the Council approved.
The City of Tucson’s election process, vote by mail, has seen increased turnout across the City in each of the Wards. People can vote without fear and in the comfort of their own homes.
This election system saves taxpayer money to the tune of $600,000 each election cycle for the Wards 3, 5, and 6 Council seats and $1,000,000 each election cycle for the Mayor’s election and Wards 1, 2, and 4 Council seat.
With the City of Tucson election process, the results are counted and tabulated that night, so we are not waiting for an additional period of time for the final results.
The City of Tucson offers a polling place per Ward as well as the Tucson City Clerk’s 12th Street Election Office for people to cast their ballots if they so choose.
In the last three elections in Tucson, using the vote by mail process, there were 29 provisional ballots with 102,454 votes cast in 2019. In 2015 and 2013, there were 37 provisional ballots and 3 provisional ballots respectively for those elections.
The towns of Sahuarita and Oro Valley, conduct their elections using vote by mail, as well as Prescott Valley, Surprise, Pinetop-Lakeside, Clarkdale, Peoria, Payson, Paradise Valley, Litchfield Park, and Globe. So this is not something new and untried.
This is a good, tested process, that I hope the Arizona Legislature and our national leaders would act since there is a health crisis, and let the County Recorders run the upcoming elections as a vote by mail, even for this election only.
If they don’t they may endanger our citizens. You can still get their ballot mailed to them by signing up for the Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL). For more information, please call the Pima County Recorder’s Office, 724-4350, or go online to recorder.pima.gov/pevl.
We need to be safe and healthy!
This article appears in May 14-20, 2020.
Not enough control for mail in election. We know why supporters want it. They are tired of losing like Hillary. She cheated all she could and still lost.
Mare you forgot to say why republicans don’t like it. To many citizens who have a right to vote democrat must be stopped from voting. The previous ag spent millions of dollars in az investigating every one voting in past elections to see how many illegal aliens were voting in az. The only person who they could find who voted illegally was a woman who voted for mitt romney twice az ann coulter! Ed montini did a column about her years ago. Over 400,000 american citizens have been prevented from voting in az because they don’t have a birth certificate to show to register in az. I was born on an indian reservation before birth certificate were used very much. Fortunately I have lived in the same place for 60 years and don’t have to re-register.
Captain, everybody remembers what they did in 2008 to the military vote. They need counted out of country servicemen and women. There was concern that those weren’t Democrat votes and they destroyed them. Motor voter law really started the fraud.
Vote fraud is the scheme. Always has bee. Always will be.
https://publicinterestlegal.org/blog/president-obama-just-encourage-illegal-aliens-vote/
Like I said earlier alex Gak, the stuff you’re shooting up must be the shit!
Thank you Councilman Fimbres for your common sense approach to voting. Personally, I’ve been on the early voting mail-in ballot for years; simple, easy, & drop your completed ballot in a mailbox. As to the “voter fraud” BS the GOP hands down, it’s ludicrous! I think there were 1-2 cases in the entire stare of intentional voter fraud in the last election. There were a couple of other cases where winter visitors had mistakenly voted in both their home state & in AZ but we’re found to be not intentional fraud. Bottom line, a handful of votes that had NO impact on any election. Vote by mail “voter fraud” concerns by the GOP. are as valid as #45 telling us there were only 15 cases of Covid & the problem was going to disappear. We are now going on 90,000 deaths in our country. Both are either gross exaggerations &/or outright lies.
Not that long ago, there was a Tucson politician, a legislator, who was convicted of petition forgery. He forged over 70% of the signatures on his nomination petitions for State Senate. All he needed was 1400 honest signatures but his bad habits got the best of him.
Prior to that, he was famous for putting initiatives on the ballot. So much so that he was call “Mr Petition”. His technique? To forge over 70% of the one hundred seventy thousands signatures need to qualify issues for the ballot. He ran a world class forgery mill. Became an expert at it.
The entire petition industry still is informed by the techniques he developed for perfecting the art of the perfectly forged signature. For maintaining that ratio of 70% forgeries to 30% good signatures, collecting enough real signatures for use in the next forgery campaign and to maintain a superficial sense of a real petition.
This past fall, this same corrupt thought process was applied to early balloting. People were put on the street harvesting ballots and forging votes. Over 40,000 blank ballots were collected from people who had no clue as to anything political.
Now, they want to open this wide open. Right now, the corruption requires two steps, that you get a victim on the early ballot list and then collect their ballot.
Our good man Richard, wants to do away with the first step and open the corruption wide open.
And there will be a slow, to no response when fraud appears. And it will. It always does.
I remember j.d. ignorant southern white trash hey worth had a problem with that. Goppers passed law making it almost impossible to pay petition gathers for initiates ;but allowed it for their nominating petitions to get on ballot. Hey huppenthal been steeling anybody else’s campaign signs lately? Forging signatures on nominating petitions is a crime seldom punished because politicians do it. In person or mail in voter fraud is almost nonexistent and you know it. Former ag spent millions looking for illegal alien voting in az none found only found a republican who voted twice for romney. All you goppers want to do is stop democrat citizens from voting. Paul weyrich even said so!
“Forging signatures on nominating petitions is a crime seldom punished…”
It’s punished quite frequently, a sitting corporation commissioner just was kicked off the ballot this week for submitting forged signatures withing the last week.
Also, thank you for admitting that it is common knowledge that tens of thousands of blank ballots are “harvested” and hundreds of thousands of signatures are forged.
In the case of “Mr. Petition”, he has a felony on his record for his 1,000 plus forgeries on his nominating petitions .
And, in the case of that campaign sign, it’s not theft when you get permission to remove a sign from the property owner. I was judged “not guilty” in a full blown trial and was elected by a two to one three months later against a tough opponent For those of you who didn’t follow that little episode, some political action committee out of New Jersey ran an unethical hit piece on a campaign sign. Didn’t work, I was elected by one of my largest margins.
herr huppy O.J. simpson was found not guilty too! As I wrote only one person has been prosecuted for voter fraud in person or mail in and that was a republican like you. If you have evidence of in person voter fraud or forging mail in ballot signatures lets have it you don’t! Petitions have always had problems with bad signatures ;but those bad signatures don’t vote in elections and you know this. By the way huppy when democrats said they would support a national voter registration for all american citizens republicans in congress said NO! because that wouldn’t prevent voters from voting democrat.
https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
Its6 not easy being green.
https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/green-party-signature-gatherer-charged-with-submitting-false-information-in-nevada/
This article was about the election process, casting ballots and not getting petition signatures.
Obviously Huppenthal, the former Arizona School Superintendent, can’t read, as well as the other posters here writing about petitions.
These people never said a word when the others cities in Maricopa County went to vote by mail, nor did they say anything about Sahuarita and Oro Valley. Why? They are controlled by their friends in the GOP. When Tucson went to vote by mail, then they complained.
In 2000, it was the Republican controlled Arizona Legislature who changed the rules for absentee voting, which started all this.
During last City of Tucson election in 2019, the election canvass showed that there were only 37 provisional ballots cast out of more than 102,000 cast for the City election.
Huppenthal and the others would not know this since they don’t live in Tucson, for which all active registered voters get their ballot through the mail.
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State changed the state elections to vote by mail. as well as Ohio Governor, Mike Devine, a Republican. The President of the United States cast his absentee ballot through the mail in Florida.
I am proud to live in Tucson and cast my vote by mail for the city elections, as well as the elections for this year too overseen by the Pima County Recorder’s Office and the Division of Elections.
Thank you Councilmember Fimbres for your article and advocacy on this.
Call it what you want, this about stealing elections. By hook or by crook. Because step two of the process is relaxing the requirements and then non citizens vote. Lie all you want to but it’s guaranteed to be coming. Hey why don’t we dump the electoral college while we are at it. That why 30 million more illegals will make the socialist party win every presidential election. Votes from 40 other states won’t matter. And we will have mob rule.
So true. If they will cheat on petitions, they will on elections.
https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/tag/john-kromko/
“Huppenthal and the others would not know this since they don’t live in Tucson, for which all active registered voters get their ballot through the mail.”
My father still lives in the Tucson home our family built for $500 in 1964.
The fix is already in for Tucson elections. You’ve built a city where only 8% of City of Tucson survey respondents rate it an excellent place to raise a child. You’ve built a city where less than 2,500 miles of streets contain over 380,000 miles of cracks and crevasses. You’ve built a city so heavily taxed that it hasn’t created a single job in the last decade.
That’s what you want to bring to the entire state.
These aren’t provisional ballots, these are forged ballots, where tens of thousands of blank ballots are picked up, “harvested” and voted at a forgery house.
And, you aren’t talking about expanding voting rights, you are proposing to reduce voting rights by taking away the right to vote at a polling booth. We already have the right to vote by mail.
This is about stealing elections. The Russia hoax has been uncovered but democrats can accomplish this without getting caught. What part of our elections do they like? They have controlled them for decades. They created their so called crisis. Trust is non existent.
If our lives are at risk by voting why didn’t you outlaw grocery shopping? Truth is Wisconsin was just caught adding 30000 ballots the day after the primary election.
Dont6 let them steal another election. They cheated Sanders so Biden could win.
I have lived in Tucson for over nine years after being born in Philadelphia and moving at the age of 4 to Chicago with my family; I lived in Chicago for 50 years and at college in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois for six. I used voting by mail when necessary, but I DO NOT favor early voting any more. I don’t think any US citizen should either. THINK!!! Here’s why, according to a 2018 article by Alan Korwin:
DON’T VOTE EARLY!!
By election day Nov. 6 your candidate may be:
Disgraced
Disqualified
Withdrawn
Under indictment
In prison
Or dead
This happens a lot.
You may get new information
that will change your mind.
It happens all the time.
Rise up as one on election day and vote!
Here’s the original source newsletter from Ala
https://mail.yahoo.com/d/search/keyword=gu…
One of the main post offices in Minneapolis was destroyed Saturday. Vote by mail has now become as risky as voting in public. Who and why was this done? The President must declare war on terror to protect our liberties.