On Tuesday, a judge considered the ongoing matter of Prop 140 in April Smith v. Fontes. The case involves a challenge of the validity of Arizona’s ranked choice voting initiative signatures.
At the end of the hearing, the number of challenged signatures was whittled down from over 40,000 to approximately 38,100 to be reviewed by a special master appointed by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge FrankMoskowitz.
Court observers are questioning if the outcome of the case has already been determined in Moskowitz’s mind.
It was evident that there was confusion between the judge and counsels for the plaintiffs, the Make Elections Fair Arizona PAC, and the Arizona Secretary of State on how to determine whether signatures already eliminated by County authorities or the Secretary of State would be present in either the full number of signatures or in “extrapolations.” The extrapolations are created by multiplying a 5% sample by 20 under existing statute to create a “validity rate” that can be applied to the sum total of signatures.
The hearing seemed expressly focused on how much of the evidence of duplicate signatures the court should exclude from consideration, rather than as the Supreme Court directed in Mussi v. Fontes, to “determine whether the exhibits prove any duplicate signatures by clear and convincing evidence.”
Judge Moskowitz appeared more concerned with determining how many exhibits do not prove duplicate signatures, saying, “They’re done. It’s over. It doesn’t matter if the remaining 31,000 or whatever it is are in fact duplicates and maybe double counted, maybe not give ’em credit and say they weren’t double counted. If you can get 4,800 that were double counted, it’s over,” describing what he expects to see in a brief from Make Elections Fair PAC.
Attorney Daniel Arellano, representing Plaintiffs April Smith, Nira Lee, and Joshua Davidian pushed back against this notion saying, “First of all, I just to be clear, I mean these all sound like categorical arguments to me, which I think are precisely what the Supreme Court said not to do. I’ve not seen briefing of this issue. There’s a preview of it. (…) I’ve not actually seen any legal argument on this, but as I listened to this argument here today, judge, I think, again, I forget if it’s Leah v. Hobbs or Leah v. Reagan, but one of the two definitely says that we get to invalidate signatures for reasons other than, in addition to, and outside of the 5% sample. And so if the premise of the committee’s argument is that it is, we have to go with what the county hasn’t validated because that is already multiplied times 20, and we can’t invalidate anything in addition to or separate from that. That is I think a proposition that the Supreme Court has squarely rejected.”
He added, “I think the point is I don’t think we can use this as an avenue to foreclose line by line review of the 38,000 signatures.”
But Judge Moskowitz was quick to retort: “No, I understand that. But even if I said yes, clear and convincing all 38,000, it says proceed accordingly. And my proceed accordingly is my next step is going to be how do I know of whatever number is of duplicates hasn’t been already invalidated. How do I know this signature hasn’t already been invalidated? And I think that would be in the proceed accordingly part of the Supreme Court’s order.”
However, the order from Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer made the court’s priority clear, “The trial court must continue with determining whether the initiative is supported by a sufficient number of qualified signatures. This determination should be made as expeditiously as possible to provide the parties and the public certainty.”
In a thread posted to X, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AZFEC) paraphrased a comment from the organization’s President Scot Mussi, “This isn’t a debate about dubious matches or concerns of same family members with the same name being confused as a duplicate. All the duplicates submitted to be removed were exact name and address matches that aligned with what was on the voter file. Under state law, you are only allowed to sign a petition once, so they should have been removed. Instead, thousands of people were allowed to sign the initiative petition sheets multiple times, and those signatures were counted.”
This isn’t a debate about dubious matches or concerns of same family members with the same name being confused as a duplicate. All the duplicates submitted to be removed were exact name and address matches that aligned with what was on the voter file.
In a press release the organization cited from the evidence presented that:
When the Prop 140 Committee submitted their signatures to the Secretary of State, around 250 people had signed five or more times.
One individual had signed 15 times.
All those signatures were included in the final tabulation by the Arizona Secretary of State.
In a status update hearing held late on Wednesday, it was determined that Retired Arizona Superior Court Judge Christopher Skelly will lead the signature verification effort as court-appointed Special Master. During the meeting, Judge Moskowitz again referred to a possible stopping point for the signature review, asking Arellano, “Not to be looking at this for one side or the other, but there is a number of 4,800. And the only reason I say that number is because it’s the lowest number we’re talking about. But if that 4,800 number of duplicates is reached um… Does he stop if he knocks out whatever that number is 4,800 of duplicates? So you don’t get to your 33,000 something, something number Mr. Arellano? Does he just stop?”
Arellano, representing the plaintiffs, responded that the Special Master should be checking in with attorneys from both sides “periodically,” however, he added, “We’ve not set that up as any particular kind of benchmark. Nor do I know that we’d be comfortable doing so, since it sort of sets that up as like a goal of sorts.”
The signature checking effort is expected to run through September 16th with a hearing to discuss legal briefs from both sides on Friday.
The Surprise woman whose arrest for her speech during a council meeting went viral has sued the city, alleging they violated her constitutional right to criticize the government.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) filed the lawsuit with the Arizona District Court on Tuesday on behalf of the woman, Rebekah Massie.
The outgoing mayor of Surprise, Skip Hall, directed police to arrest Massie last month for refusing to cease her criticisms of their city attorney, Robert Wingo, during a council meeting. Hall declared that Massie wasn’t allowed to “attack” — as in, criticize — a public official at a city council meeting, and denied her the opportunity to conclude her public remarks.
Further, Hall warned during his viral argument with Massie that others who dared to criticize city officials or staff during public meetings in the future would be escorted out.
In her controversial criticism, Massie had challenged the city’s decision to increase Wingo’s pay due to his work performance. Police cited “trespassing” as the basis of Massie’s arrest.
Police arrested Massie in front of her 10-year-old daughter, who had attended the meeting with her mother.
Massie said in a video announcing her lawsuit with FIRE that Hall had weaponized the police to violate her rights.
“I have certain inalienable rights, and they were not only trampled on, but the mayor essentially weaponized the police force to shut me up,” said Massie.
LAWSUIT: With FIRE’s help, an Arizona mom is suing the City of Surprise, AZ., after the mayor ordered her arrest for questioning a pay raise for a city official.
In America, the last thing citizens should fear when they attend public meetings is leaving in handcuffs. pic.twitter.com/ox6EyEiVAW
In a separate press release, Massie said that her decision to stand her ground and be arrested served as a teaching opportunity for her children and the community.
“I wanted to teach my children the importance of standing up for their rights and doing what is right — now I’m teaching that lesson to the city,” said Massie. “It’s important to fight back to show all of my children that the First Amendment is more powerful than the whims of any government official.”
“(…) It’s important to fight back to show all of my children that the First Amendment is more powerful than the whims of any government official.”
FIRE’s lawsuit names Hall along with the city of Surprise and the arresting officer, Steven Shernicoff, as the defendants. The organization dubbed the council’s policy forbidding criticisms of city officials and staff the “Council Criticism Policy.”
FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick stated in the press release that the First Amendment especially protects critiques of the government.
“If the First Amendment protects anything, it protects criticizing government officials,” said Fitzpatrick. “Arresting government critics might be how the world’s repressive regimes operate, but it has no place in America.”
Massie identifies politically as a libertarian; she founded The Grand Failure, a nonprofit advocating for government transparency and public safety.
Hall’s replacement, Mayor-Elect Kevin Sartor, condemned his soon-to-be predecessor’s actions in a public statement in the days following the incident.
“As Americans, our right to free speech is fundamental, especially when it comes to holding our government accountable,” said Sartor. “What happened to Rebekah Massie is unacceptable. No citizen should ever be arrested for voicing their concerns, especially in a forum specifically designed for public input.”
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
Arizona’s top county prosecutor is setting her sights on teen violence within her jurisdiction.
Earlier this month, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell announced the start of ‘Report, Don’t Repost,’ which “tackles the growing issue of teen violence fueled by the sharing of violent content on social media platforms rather than reporting those incidents to law enforcement.”
In a press conference to promote this new campaign by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and other local law enforcement agencies, Mitchell shared that “in 2023, the number of submittals for first-degree murder involving juveniles surged by 350%, rising from 6 cases in 2022 to 27 cases in 2023. Similarly, submittals for aggravated assault saw a 108% increase, with cases rising from 12 to 25 between 2022 and 2023. Overall, total referrals of juveniles charged as adults increased by 32% during the same period.”
The veteran prosecutor said, “When a video shows up online or on social, all we know is what we can see. We may not have the names of the people in the video or know where the fight occurred. We also may not know what happened just before or after the video begins and ends. It makes it infinitely harder for police to investigate and for my lawyers to prosecute.”
Mitchell added, “My job as a prosecutor is to build a strong case. Encouraging the community to report these incidents instead of sharing them online is an excellent way to do that.”
The law enforcement agencies on board with this campaign are Phoenix Police, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Apache Junction Police, Arizona State University Police, Buckeye Police, Chandler Police, Gilbert Police, Glendale Police, Goodyear Police, Mesa Police, Queen Creek Police, Surprise Police, and Tempe Police.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office posted a graphic of the campaign to highlight the importance of the issue.
Additionally, two Phoenix Police Department officers discussed the new campaign in the aftermath of the announcement.
According to the release from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, “The campaign includes a range of educational resources for parents, educators, and teens that highlight the consequences of sharing violent content.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Multiple sources have confirmed that two professors at Arizona State University, Dr. Angela Lober and Jenny Irish, spent an hour discussing with students “dismantling capitalism and electing a female president to restore reproductive rights.” They also asserted that, as Lober claimed, “the United States hates women and everything the female body does.”
The program in question: “Jenny Irish’s HATCH: A Speculative Future for Reproductive Rights,” was offered by the university through ASU Events on the website. The event was described as a workshop where, “Professor Irish will give a reading from Hatch, after which she’ll be joined in conversation by Dr. Angela Lober, Clinical Associate Professor and Director of the Academy of Lactation Programs at the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation. Come ready with your own questions and comments about the future of reproductive health in the face of climate change, misinformation, and other problems facing our present and our future.”
Hatch is a collection of prose poems from English Professor Jenny Irish. ASU described Hatch as, “This apocalyptic vision engages with the most pressing concerns of this contemporary sociopolitical moment: reproductive rights, climate crises, and mass extinction; gender and racial bias in healthcare and technology; disinformation, conspiracy theories, and pseudoscience; and the possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence.”
The event, co-hosted by the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, took a decidedly apocalyptic turn according to College Fix, with Irish warning of a dystopian future for the United States complete with “cannibalism,” and “forced breeding camps.”
“So much of our reality points toward those futures,” she told attendees. Lober added, “The balance between hope and despair is an everyday experience for me.” She explained, “A couple years ago I never thought Roe v. Wade would be overturned. How could we possibly do that?”
Irish also made an ardent defense of transgenderism and claimed an “all-out assault on the trans community and people’s ability to self-identify,” exists in the U.S. She added, “It is disgusting, immoral, and wrong.” Per the Arizona Sun Times, the professors took about 15 questions via Zoom and when asked about the well-published decline in global birth rates, Lober said it doesn’t “bother” her, claiming “we are overpopulated.”
Coordinator of the ASU event, Karina Fitzgerald, told College Fix, the goal of the event was to “encourage students that are following creative pursuits or other types of worldbuilding to simply explore other elements that they haven’t thought of before in their writing, or other ways to challenge themselves in creative processes.” She described the “element of worldbuilding” for creating “fictional stories” as “a good exercise for students to get in the practice of.”
However, ASU Professor of Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Theology Dr. Owen Anderson offered a different perspective in a comment to AZ Free News. He starkly criticized his colleagues’ openly political statements that move beyond the “fictional stories.”
Dr. Anderson wrote, “ASU professors are not to use university resources to tell students how to vote in an election. Not only that, professors are to be examples of clear thinking. Instead, these professors are using cheap scare tactics and logical fallacies to try and influence students. It is a misuse of their position and creates an unfair power dynamic for students. When will ASU hold such professors accountable?”
The Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, Dr. Jonathan Turley, while noting the professors “have every right to espouse these views and it is good for students to have a wide variety of viewpoints on campus,” took note of the “hyperbolic rhetoric,” renewing his objection that conservative, moderate, and libertarian faculty have been purged from academia.
Specifically, Turley pointed to the staunchly one-sided, anti-capitalist nature of the event’s rhetoric writing, “The ASU event captures a rising call for dismantling an economic system that helped drive industrial innovation and massive wealth creation. It has also left great wealth disparities. We have sought to address poverty with social programs that offer greater opportunity for those who have not been able to escape cycles of poverty. We have much work to be done. However, the anti-capitalist movement often offers few specifics on the alternatives, as at the ASU event.”
He concluded, “This is a debate that should be welcomed but not in this type of one-sided, jingoistic presentation. Imagine how much more substantive this panel would have been with an alternative viewpoint. Let’s have a discussion on the merits of capitalism and the record of alternative systems. That would offer educational and not merely emotive benefits to our academic community.”
Two Arizona sisters, identified as Enedina N., 72, and Ubaldina N., 82, have been found dead in a White Nissan Pathfinder riddled with bullets off the side of Mexican Federal Highway 2, approximately 21 miles south of the border community of Sonoyta.
The two women, one holding dual-U.S.-Mexican citizenship and the second a permanent resident, were reportedly on their way to Caborca, Sonora, their hometown.
According to a Friday statement posted to X from the Sonora Attorney General’s Office (Fiscalía de Sonora), “The incident was reported at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, August 23, when two lifeless women were reported, from Arizona and originally from Caborca, where they were headed, identified as Enedina ‘N,’ 72 years old, and Ubaldina ‘N,’ 82, inside a white Nissan Pathfinder vehicle, which had bullet impacts and had overturned at kilometer 221+500 of the aforementioned road.”
Avanza investigación de ataque armado en carretera Sonoyta-Caborca; asegurados vehículo, armas y cartuchos tras operativo de búsqueda de los responsables
General Plutarco Elías Calles, Sonora, 23 de agosto de 2024.- Derivado de un reporte generado en la carretera… pic.twitter.com/KyDQLL9k7F
The authorities reported that investigators and from SEDENA and National Guard officers located a navy blue 2023 Ford F150, which had been reported stolen near the town of Quitovac, with “90 caliber 7.62×39 cartridges, three caliber 7.62×39 magazines, 22 rifle magazines, three ballistic vests and four AK-47 caliber 7.62×39 rifles.” The Mexican authorities noted that the “probable criminals” are still at large. According to Reuters, the particular stretch of Federal Highway 2, “is infamous for violence and the trafficking of migrants searching for better opportunities and security in the United States.”
Prosecutors for the Sonora AG’s Office said, “Security forces from three levels of government immediately initiated an operation to locate and arrest the criminal group responsible, with the support of specialized air and ground forces.” The Biden-Harris Administration’s Department of State told USA Today through a spokesman that U.S. authorities “are closely monitoring the situation.” The spokesman told the outlet, “We extend our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the deceased. We have no further comment at this time.”
Arizona outlet 12News reportedly spoke to the son of one of the victims on condition of anonymity Friday evening. He revealed that not only had his mother and aunt perished in the horrific attack, but their third sister had also recently perished from cancer. “My mother and my aunt were taken away violently from us,” he told reporters. “They were great people… they were great, loving grandmothers who loved to help their family and their community.”
The son told 12News that his mother and aunt lived in Phoenix but also owned homes in Mexico and would travel back and forth to visit family and vacation.
“This was so tragic, so shocking, that somebody like my mom and my aunt would be victims of such a crime,” he added. “Because they were just completely innocent people who just happened to travel the area.”
The son provided additional details of the sisters’ horrific deaths. He explained that his mother, who had been driving, was apparently shot in the head while the vehicle was moving at a high speed and died instantly, while his aunt was fatally injured when the vehicle left the road and rolled several times dying trapped in the wreck.
“This is tragic. Graphic. It just tears at the heart,” he said. “And not a single family member has received any information other than what they’ve actually seen on the news, and that’s also a tragic part of the story.”
He also told reporters, “Nobody has told us what is going on with the ongoing investigation. We don’t know anything about the investigation. They haven’t told us any arrests or any leads.”
The son said he feels that the brutal murder was a case of “wrong place, wrong time,” with the outlet noting that the attack took place in broad daylight, and the sisters appeared to be following guidelines given to U.S. tourists traveling in Mexico.
The son lamented, “The crime that is happening there, what happened to my mother and my aunt… it’s just not a recent thing, this has been going on for decades.” He continued, “There’s been a war on drugs since I was a little kid… I’ve heard it a million times. But it’s still going on. It’s still killing innocent people. It’s still killing grandmas. It’s devastating to the community, to the surviving members, and we don’t have an answer.”
Arizona’s largest county is taking action to support vulnerable youth.
Earlier this month, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors approved $150,000 for students who are coming out of foster care. The government funding will go to HopeTech, which according to the release from the County, “is the first program of its kind in Arizona, combining housing and support services for foster youth with career training at a Career Technical Education District (CTED) campus.”
HopeTech has been constructed at East Valley Institute of Technology (EVIT). It is a residence hall with 64 beds.
“Investing in our young people as they transition out of foster care is an investment in the future of our communities,” said Vice Chairman Thomas Galvin, who represents District 2 on the Board of Supervisors. “Workforce training provides them with important, economically viable skills, and the opportunity to build a stable, successful life.”
“The generous support from Maricopa County is more than a financial gift,” said EVIT Superintendent Dr. Chad Wilson. “It provides students with additional resources and support needed to step confidently into adulthood and onto a pathway towards independence and prosperity. We are deeply grateful for this investment into these students’ futures.”
Maricopa County’s release reveals that the county “will provide funding to EVIT for furniture and appliances, transportation items to allow greater ease of accessing the 65+ acre property and transporting youth to appointments and trainings, and recreational courts and equipment to provide youth with opportunities for physical activities.”
The communication from the County shares that “officials are hopeful that this program can serve as a model to be replicated in other CTEDs across the state and technical schools nationwide.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
