Election irregularities have haunted Maricopa County, Ariz. for the past ten years, raising doubts about the legitimacy of a number of elections, including the 2020 presidential election, where Biden’s state-certified victory was a tiny fraction of the overall vote, and again in 2022 in the election between Katie Hobbs and Kari Lake.
Since then, Republicans in Arizona — and other states with election issues — have sought to reform the state’s elections to help ensure that everyone in the state can feel confident that results were conducted fairly. Democrats have aggressively opposed the efforts and on Friday, Hobbs vetoed several bills from the GOP-controlled legislature — including four bills that would make elections more transparent.
Senate Bill 1135 sought to eliminate Arizona’s affiliation with the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) and shift voter registration to an outsourced third-party entity. Furthermore, the bill required the use of blue or black pens when marking ballots. Senate Bill 1105, which suggested permitting election personnel to tally early ballots at polling locations on Election Day, was likewise declined. Senate Bill 1066 required private voter registration organizations to prominently print “Not from a Government Agency” on envelopes sent to voters. And finally, Senate Bill 1180 sought to prevent organizations from providing a financial incentive based on the number of voter registrations they collect.
It’s like she’s not even trying to pretend to care about elections being fair and honest.
While Republicans have majorities in the Arizona House and Senate, their majority isn’t large enough to override Hobbs’s vetoes. Hobbs’s veto decisions come in the wake of Kari Lake’s recent announcement that her organization, Save Arizona, plans to carry out the most extensive ballot-chasing endeavor in the state’s history during the upcoming 2024 election cycle.
“We have been working nonstop to put together a team and we are officially launching the largest most extensive ballot-chasing operation in our state’s history and, frankly, possibly in American history. The courts just ruled that this corrupt election will stay up. The courts just ruled that our elections can run lawlessly. The courts have ruled that anything goes. Well, we can play by those same rules, okay? If anything goes, then anything goes.”
She added, “We are going to start chasing ballots like you’ve never seen.”
Winning elections and taking back the state government appears to be the only way elections in Arizona can be cleaned up and the will of the people can be implemented. According to The Epoch Times, Hobbs has vetoed 99 bills passed by the Republican-controlled legislature — more than any previous governor — including bills that ban the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 public schools, eliminate the food tax, protect infants born alive in botched abortions, and even a bill that protected pregnant women from being attacked.
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