Cronkite News
By Howard Fischer | Capitol Media Services
A coalition of community groups is asking Arizona voters to overturn a series of restrictions on registration and voting already enacted and those now being contemplated this year by the Republican-controlled legislature.
Arizonans for Free and Fair Elections has taken the first steps to put a measure on the November ballot that would restore the “permanent early voting list” that lawmakers killed in 2021. It also would ensure that people can continue to cast their ballots in person over the weekend right before Election Day and repeal laws that limit to whom someone can give an early ballot to take to the polls.
And it would void some of the hurdles that lawmakers have put in the path of those who want to propose their own laws and constitutional amendments, hurdles that this measure will need to vaunt like wholesale challenges to petition signatures.
But Joel Edman of the Arizona Democracy Resource Center, one of the organizers of the initiative, said a larger goal is to cut off measures now being debated, like eliminating drop boxes for ballots that aid the disabled and eliminating options for early voting.
The measure also would put a permanent halt to the kind of efforts that are still taking place to overturn the 2020 election with some lawmakers still seeking to substitute their own slate of presidential electors despite the popular vote for President Biden.
“We vote for who wins,” Edman said. “Our legislature doesn’t get to go and change it for us after the fact.”
And there’s another significant curb on legislative powers.
It would prevent lawmakers from handing over ballots and election equipment “to unqualified sort of Cyber Ninjas-type folks who want to run another scam on our state and just breed distrust and misinformation using our public dollars to do it.”
The organization has just five months to gather 237,645 valid signatures to put the issue on the November ballot. And, given the possibility of signatures being disqualified — including business and conservative groups using legal procedures that have kept prior initiatives off the ballot — Edman said he recognizes that a lot more names will need to be gathered by the July 7 deadline.
