by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Dec 11, 2024 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Another election has come and gone, and unsurprisingly, Arizona is yet again the butt of national jokes for taking weeks to process ballots and tabulate votes. While some in the corporate media still attempt to defend our vote counting circus, most everyone is in agreement that big changes are needed. It doesn’t take being an election expert to recognize that states with far greater populations, who also experience large rates of early voting, somehow get their votes counted on election night or near to it.
It’s a fix that is long overdue, yet for over five years the reform has continued to run into a political meatgrinder at the state Capitol. Since 2019, our organization, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, has supported, championed, and authored bills to ensure we get results on election night. And while Democrats in the legislature have been an obstacle to reform (they have universally opposed any reforms geared toward getting faster results), they have not been the only impediment to fixing the problem.
The real culprit is opposition from county “election officials,” or more precisely, their taxpayer-funded lobbyists. For years, our so-called election experts have worked overtime to stop any reasonable reforms to Arizona’s mail-in voting system. Their tactics are incredibly disingenuous. When people express their frustration about the glacier pace of vote counting, they clap back (usually with dripping condescension) that their hands are tied by existing law. But when lawmakers introduce bills to change those laws, those same election officials send their army of lobbyists down to the Capitol to fight reform at every turn…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Nov 27, 2024 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Since the results of the 2024 election came in, much of the focus has been on President-elect Donald Trump’s historic win—and rightfully so. Trump won every single swing state in a massive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, and he beat her in the popular vote too.
But Kamala Harris wasn’t the only significant loser to come out of November’s election.
Here in Arizona, teachers’ unions and other anti-school choice groups, like Save Our Schools Arizona (SOSAZ), made the 2024 election a referendum on school choice. And they lost big!
Much of their work began earlier this year, when Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs came into legislative session (just like she did in 2023) with her top priority being to regulate the wildly popular Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program out of existence. But it didn’t work. Despite the noise from Hobbs, legislative Democrats, the legacy media, the teachers’ unions, and other anti-school choice groups, only minor changes were made to the ESA program through the budget, with most of it remaining untouched.
This failure fell on the heels of other similar failures…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Nov 23, 2024 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Though most attention was directed at the top of the ticket in the 2024 election, many groups on the Left waged high stakes on flipping Arizona’s barely Republican-controlled legislature.
In the two years since the 2022 election, when Republicans dwindled to 31 members of the 60-member House and 16 members in the 30-member Senate, Democrats have been busily planning and building their election takeover. After sweeping the top 3 statewide offices, including the Governorship, 2024 was the inflection point in the story of how Arizona went from red – to purple – to blue.
But that didn’t happen.
Under the leadership of Governor Hobbs and an orbit of well-funded organizations that raised upwards of $10 million to target key swing districts in Arizona, the Left failed to secure their legislative victories. Instead, the Republican-controlled Arizona House and Senate, in fact, expanded their majorities. Despite being outspent in every single race, Republicans now hold 33 members in the House and 17 members in the Senate, a small but meaningful gain. It’s a disaster for Katie Hobbs, who is already fighting low favorability and criticism by her own party for her inability to best Republican legislative leadership and rack up any wins for the Left’s agenda…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Nov 15, 2024 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
How do you waste $15 million? Just ask the folks over at the Make Elections Fair Committee. Last week, their insane attempt to force a California-style elections system of ranked choice voting and jungle primaries went down in flames. Prop 140 failed miserably with nearly 60 percent of the electorate voting “No.” And it wasn’t for lack of funding.
With a huge amount of money coming from the pockets of out-of-state billionaires, the Make Elections Fair Committee spent at least $15 million—giving them a 20:1 spending advantage. That’s right. For every $1 spent trying to defeat the initiative, the Prop 140 committee spent $20 trying to pass it! And they still lost by a wide margin!
That’s legendary. If any business idea ever failed that badly, it would be banished and never spoken of again. And that’s exactly what should happen with ranked choice voting and its ugly cousin jungle primaries (which was already overwhelmingly rejected by Arizona voters back in 2012)…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Oct 25, 2024 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
If you can’t get people to like your ideas, change the system. That’s the clear agenda behind the Prop 140 scheme that seeks to bring ranked-choice voting and jungle primaries to Arizona. And there’s no more hiding it.
At a recent news conference organized by the Prop 140 campaign, Kimber Lanning—founder and CEO of a group called Local First Arizona that wants to build “equitable” systems for Arizona’s businesses—let the mask slip. Lanning revealed that when other states have adopted the reforms included in Prop 140, they have been able to move forward on transformational ideas like climate action plans and providing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
Wait. Aren’t ranked-choice voting and jungle primaries supposed to lead to more moderation in the government? That’s what the backers of Prop 140 continue to push. But since when did climate action plans and special benefits for illegal immigrants become moderate?
Therin lies the true motivations behind Prop 140. Liberal billionaires from Colorado and others states around the country are pouring millions and millions into Arizona to pass this initiative in an effort to turn Arizona blue. They envision a system anchored around ranked-choice voting and jungle primaries will put them in charge of the political and policy agenda here in Arizona.
And in their zeal for power and control, they don’t even recognize the underlying hubris and irony of their entire campaign…
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