Early proposals, some of which garnered national media attention, included legislation that would abolish Arizona’s Permanent Early Voting List or eliminate early voting entirely. Those bills did not get hearings.
By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
Prominent business leaders are asking lawmakers to reject several election-related bills that they deemed attempts to suppress voting in Arizona, a move that comes as Georgia faces calls for boycotts for passing similar legislation.
The business group Greater Phoenix Leadership issued a statement on Friday, which it also sent to members of the legislature, opposing legislation that would purge inactive voters from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List, require voters to add proof of identification to their early ballots and limit the early voting period before elections.
The statement came in the form of an op-ed by GPL board members Adam Goodman and Sharon Harper, who co-chair the group’s public policy committee, that ran in the Arizona Capitol Times in early March. The new statement includes the signatures of 40 business leaders, mostly GPL board members. Among the signatories are Arizona Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill, the heads of several major health care companies and the CEOs of other prominent Arizona businesses.
Arizona’s election system is safe, secure and convenient, the statement read, but despite that, lawmakers are attempting to make changes that would upend the system and suppress Arizonans’ votes.
“These measures seek to disenfranchise voters. They are ‘solutions’ in search of a problem. They are attempts at voter suppression cloaked as reform — plain and simple,” the statement read.
