A Denver-based political action committee has poured more than $800,000 into lobbyist efforts to influence legislation involving Arizona’s election laws, and some of their literature has come under challenge as being outdated or misleading.
Unite America’s website proclaims it supports electoral reforms such as nonpartisan ballot initiatives and legislative campaigns which “increase competition, participation, and accountability in the political system.” The group, which utilizes the tagline Country Over Party, also operates Unite Arizona and is registered to conduct lobbying activities in the state.
Since Arizona’s legislative session started on Jan. 11, Unite America – Unite Arizona has taken positions on several election-related bills, including one which the group opposed that seeks to reduce the number of un-utilized ballots being mailed out. The group has also supported a bill that would replace Arizona’s presidential primary process with a complex new format.
Unite America also claims to be focused on “ease of voting through more accessibility” although critics say some of those efforts unnecessarily open the door to more opportunities for election fraud.
In 2019, Unite America Institute rated Arizona with a score of 28 out of 50 for implementing election law changes which adhere to Unite America’s principles. That prompted the group to focus on lobbying to change what it calls “the unjust nature of presidential primary elections [PPE] in the Grand Canyon state.”
The solution, according to Unite Arizona’s website, is to enact complex legislation such as HB2378 to establish Rank Choice Voting (RCV) for use during the PPE.
Under RCV, voters in a presidential primary would rank candidates in order of preference. It can make it easier for more candidates to do well in the early round of a crowded field, but the Unite Arizona website does not address the number of ways RCV is vulnerable to manipulation nor how expensive it would be to overhaul Arizona’s election process.
HB2378 was opposed by the Arizona Association of Counties, which represents those who actually run elections. The bill failed to make it out of committee.
One bill Unite America – Unite Arizona is fighting is SB1069 (now active as SB1485) which if enacted would remove around 200,000 of the state’s 3.2 million voters currently on the Permanent Early Voter List (PEVL).
That figure of how many voters may be impacted was provided to legislators by Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat. But anyone reading Unite Arizona’s website would believe the legislation calls for “massive changes to PEVL that would disenfranchise millions of voters.”
However, the legislation introduced by Republican Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita would only require a county to drop a voter from PEVL, or what becomes EVL, if the voter fails to utilize their early ballot in both the primary and general election in each of the last two election cycles.
Voters would also be sent a notice about their lack of us of PEVL before removal, and despite suggestions to the contrary, the bill does not effect a voter’s actual registration file.
But Unite Arizona contends legislation like SB1069-turned-SB1485 would “be detrimental to Arizonans’ ability to fairly vote in elections” and would “create obstacles that would increase the difficulty of voting by mail.”
In addition to misleading statements about the legislation, some voters and legislators point to outdated information on the Unite Arizona website that does not reflect amendments to the legislation, thus giving an incomplete and inaccurate view of the Ugenti-Rita’s bill.
By Scott Walter and Aimee Yentes | AZ Free Enterprise Club |
How many Arizonans like the idea of one billionaire family manipulating the way Arizona county election offices operate? That’s an unpopular idea for people across the political spectrum, especially when the billionaire is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose controversial actions make him distrusted by Left and Right.
Yet that’s what happened last November, in Arizona and dozens of other states. Zuckerberg and his wife gave $350 million to a supposedly “nonpartisan” nonprofit, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which in turn re-granted the money to thousands of local government election offices across America, including nine of Arizona’s 15 counties.
Details aren’t easy to come by, because CTCL has refused to answer questions from the New YorkTimes, the Associated Press, National Public Radio, and others. Despite CTCL declaring grants were meant to offset unforeseen expenses due to COVID-19, reports show that only a tiny fraction of the monies typically went to things like Personal Protective Equipment. CTCL cared much more about financing liberally placed drop boxes around each county and how many foreign languages ads would appear in.
That’s because CTCL’s leaders are experts in every trick in the Left’s handbook of juicing turnout in the locales and demographics that help their preferred political party. CTCL’s founders all came from another group, now defunct: the New Organizing Institute. Unlike CTCL, which is a so-called 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit that’s legally required to be nonpartisan, the New Organizing Institute was a 501(c)(4) nonprofit which allowed it more flexibility to meddle in politics. And meddle it did. The Washington Post bluntly called it, “the Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry,” because it spread that party’s state-of-the-art voter turnout techniques.
How similar are CTCL and the New Organizing Institute? So similar that the Capital Research Center posted a quiz with texts from both groups’ websites, to see if readers could tell one from the other. It’s a hard test, because the groups’ missions are essentially the same: turn out voters that will favor their preferred candidates.
Did that happen in November? Yes. The Capital Research Center analyzed state after battleground state to see if there were partisan patterns in CTCL’s funding and the election returns. Again, CTCL’s failure to reveal its funding makes data incomplete, but most states, though apparently not Arizona, saw CTCL’s cash go disproportionately to big cities rich with Democratic votes, like Philadelphia.
The near-universal effect of CTCL’s grants was disproportionately greater turnout for one political party. Here’s how it broke down in Arizona, comparing the votes for president in 2020 versus 2016. All 15 counties increased their votes for both parties, but not at all equally. And both parties saw their votes increase even more in the nine counties CTCL funded than the six counties it did not. Here especially the results were unequal.
For the Republicans, the funded counties’ votes increased by 46% more than the rate at which unfunded counties increased. For Democrats, funded counties’ votes skyrocketed upwards 81% more quickly than they rose in unfunded counties.
That inequality in turnout translated into a lot of votes. Again, both parties had more 2020 votes in those nine CTCL-funded counties. But the additional votes Democrats received there gave them a margin over their opponents of 129,000 votes, or more than ten times the Democrats’ state-wide margin of victory.
The Arizona legislature is considering a bill that would ban private funding of county election offices, and we both testified on it. We understand why counties always like possible extra funds, but CTCL’s 2020 scheme raises the question whether Arizona’s elections will be fair if they’re controlled by billionaires instead of the people’s elected representatives.
On Monday, March 1, the Mesa City Council will consider a new ordinance to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the protected classes in the city’s nondiscrimination laws. While the new rules are welcome by city leaders and residents, how they will be implemented has raised concerns.
The “nondiscrimination laws” which are meant to be a shield to protect people from unjust discrimination have raised concerns for parents of young children and individuals with closely held religious beliefs.
For young parents, the prospect of allowing children to use bathroom facilities with people who identify as sharing the same gender but are of the opposite sex has raised both safety and privacy concerns.
For religious advocates, like Cathi Herrod, Director of the Center For Arizona Policy (CAP), the concern is that the “ordinance would be used as a sword against individuals and organizations who have a historic understanding of marriage and gender.”
Supporters say the ordinance would merely replace the city’s existing fair housing code to provide a much broader set of protections, some of which already exist under state and federal law.
In contrast, Herrod’s group claims that the proposal would mean the following:
● Fitness centers, water parks, public swimming pools, and similar facilities would have to allow all men identifying as women access to women’s showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms.
● Women’s domestic violence shelters would be forced to allow a man identifying as a woman to share living quarters, showers, and bathrooms with vulnerable and abused women.
● Sex-specific jobs like an employee at a women’s shelter could not be denied to a man identifying as a woman.
● Faith-based adoption agencies would be forced to choose between placing children in same-sex households against their beliefs or closing down their adoption services.
● Wedding vendors like cake bakers and florists would be forced to choose between their livelihood and their faith.
● A religious bookstore would not be free to require all employees to adhere to their religious beliefs.
Herrod and others say the proposed “ordinance undermines constitutional freedoms of speech and religion, threatens women’s and girls’ privacy, and limits religious organizations that serve communities.”
