Arizonans have less than five months to obtain a federally-compliant form of identification needed to clear TSA airport security checkpoints or access certain Department of Defense (DOD) installations.
Beginning on May 3, 2023, an accepted identification credential under the REAL ID Act such as the Arizona Travel ID or a valid passport will be required before boarding any domestic flight. Arizonans risk being denied boarding because the standard Arizona driver license will no longer be accepted by the TSA, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation – Motor Vehicle Division (MVD).
As a result, MVD is urging people to upgrade their driver’s licenses or state identification cards to the Arizona Travel ID now rather than wait. The credential, which is distinguished on Arizona issued identification by a star in the upper right corner, costs $25.
Because the Arizona Travel ID meets more stringent identification standards than a typical driver’s license, applicants will need to provide extra documentation This includes:
Proof of identity: a birth certificate or US passport
Social Security Number (just the number, not the card)
Two documents proving Arizona residency: i.e., rental or bank statements, credit card or cell phone bills with your name and current Arizona address)
The REAL ID Act of 2005 put into place a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission for the federal government to set minimum standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as driver’s licenses. Deadlines for compliance have been extended numerous times in recent years, but requirements will now be enforced starting in May.
The Act also prohibits some federal agencies from accepting driver’s licenses and identification cards in certain situations if the issuing state does not meet the Act’s minimum standards. Situations requiring a compliant identification include domestic flights and entrance to DOD-controlled facilities and installations.
Current Arizona residents who have an Arizona-issued driver’s license or identification card can make an appointment for the Arizona Travel ID card at AZ MVD Now.
TSA does not require children under age 18 to provide REAL ID credentialed identification when traveling within the U.S. if accompanied by an adult companion who has compliant identification.
REAL ID cards are not sufficient identification for border crossings or other travel situations which require a visa, passport, or passport card. Learn more at azdot.gov/TravelID
During the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meeting on Monday, several poll workers testified that election machines at their locations had issues prior to Election Day.
During its canvass of the election results, the county reported that stress testing prior to Election Day didn’t reveal tabulator or printer issues. The board ultimately voted to certify the election results.
Tom Vanek, who reported being a registration clerk at Dysart Community Center, said that his location experienced issues with the printers on the day before Election Day. He reported that those issues were resolved by the day’s end. However, Vanek said that none of the sitebooks were connected to the server on Election Day. That meant that none of their workers could clock in.
Vanek relayed that no troubleshooter was on site, and that the county hotline couldn’t resolve the issue. He reported that the first rounds of voters that showed up to vote left the site without voting. The troubleshooter couldn’t resolve the problem and sent for another technician: the t-tech . There was still a communication issue with the printers. The first voter was able to check in at 7 am, over an hour later, but the printer failed to print her ballot.
Poll Worker explains how his ENTIRE polling location was inoperable when they opened on Election Day.
This is getting very, very bad for Maricopa County. Very bad. Like, unbelievably bad. pic.twitter.com/Fsh83t6b26
Michelle Altherr, who reported working at the Estrella Foothills High School vote center, claimed that the tabulators were malfunctioning during training. Come Election Day, Altherr reported that her location’s scanners were down for two hours.
Several other workers who testified also questioned why the screening processes failed to capture the election machine issues prior to Election Day. They challenged the county’s assertion that the Election Day troubles didn’t qualify as disenfranchisement.
One such worker, Martha Kochi, reported that the machines at her location didn’t offer any explanation for many of the rejected votes like they normally could. Kochi added that there were three ballot-on-demand printers not functioning at her location, one of which stopped working for several hours.
Mary Ziola, a worker at Happy Trails Resort wearing a #AZREVOTE shirt, said the Door 3-only option for those affected by malfunctioning tabulators caused mass concern and anger with voters. Ziola said she witnessed voters who left without voting because of the wait times or concerns with provisional ballots. One purported voter was a policeman that had to leave on an emergency call; another, a nurse that had to leave to return to work.
Several others in addition to Ziola wore “#AZREVOTE” shirts: a growing movement of activists demanding a redo of the 2022 general election. The county reported over 16,700 ballots cast in Door 3 boxes.
Another worker, Mike Peterson from the Paradise Valley Community College location, said that forcing voters to cast a provisional ballot was disenfranchisement. He alleged that only 150 of 675 voters cast a vote at one point. Peterson contended that the county didn’t train poll workers on check-out procedure.
“We, as poll workers, were not taught how to check out voters at our poll centers,” said Peterson.
Maricopa Poll Worker CONFIRMS: Poll Workers WERE NOT trained properly, voters were 100% disenfranchised.
Peterson’s testimony conflicts with the county’s response to the attorney general about this issue. The county stated that it trained workers on check-out procedure, included relevant materials in inspectors’ training materials, and trained inspectors on check-out procedure in weekly workshops.
According to the county, 206 voters checked in at one location and voted at another. Of those voters, 84 successfully checked out and cast a regular vote. The other 122 cast provisional ballots.
Raquel Cantacessi, an observer at one of the Lutheran churches, expressed concern with the mixing of tabulated and untabulated ballots in Door 3. She claimed those were lost votes.
In their report, the county explained that two vote centers ran into that Door 3 ballot mixing issue: Church of Jesus Christ of LDS Gilbert and Desert Hills Community Church. The county stated that it backed out results reported on Election Night and retabulated those ballots.
Following public comment, the county issued over two hours of an in-depth dissection of election data. Explanations of this data and Election Day issues were also made available in a report issued on Sunday by the county’s newly-launched election disinformation center.
Elections day and emergency voting director Scott Jarrett disclosed that the county is conducting a root cause analysis to determine why the tabulators malfunctioned on Election Day.
Jarrett reported that, so far, they discovered one of the issues behind the widespread tabulator failures: one of the two types of ballot-on-demand (BOD) printers used by the county had a printer setting incompatibility with the ballot paper sizing. The county increased the ballot size from 19 to 20 inches to accommodate for several candidates and propositions that weren’t finalized until late August.
The county uses two different BOD printers. One of the printer types, the “Oki” model, had a heat setting that printed the ballot markings either too lightly or in a speckled manner. The Oki model was retrofitted in 2020 to be a BOD printer for this election.
“It was very perplexing to us why this was an issue because we stress-tested our ballot on demand printers; we did it right before as we were coming up to the election,” stated Jarrett.
. @MaricopaVote : the faulty printer setting causing widespread tabulator issues occurred in one of two types of printers: the one retrofitted to be a ballot-on-demand printer, "Oki." County expressed confusion with its failure since stress testing went well. 71 sites impacted. pic.twitter.com/jZEmQiZXQn
Contrary to circulated claims of hours-long wait times at most vote centers, the county declared that the average wait time on Election Day was three to six minutes and the longest wait times for 189 of the 223 vote centers was between one and 45 minutes.
The county said that none of their vote centers put a time limit on voters casting their vote. The county said that the Door 3 option for casting a ballot has been in place since 1996.
At one point, about 80,000 people were watching the meeting’s live stream. Much to the audience’s chagrin, public comments remained at the two minute time limit.
Arizona: It's been a long day at The Maricopa County Board – was up to 80,000 live viewers – now a reduced audience is waiting for them to certify their latest election debacle.
Some commenters criticized Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates’ and Recorder Stephen Richer’s involvement with the Republican Accountability Project (RAP): a Democratic dark money group. RAP’s Republican Accountability PAC spent over $4.5 million to ensure GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s defeat according to trigger reports on the secretary of state’s campaign finance portal.
Gates disputed allegations that the county speeded up their certification process. He reminded the audience that it was taking place 20 days after Election Day.
“To challenge unofficial results would be like to challenge a TV network’s prognostications after the polls close,” stated Gates. “The canvass is what makes the results official.”
Nothing like a golden hour to commemorate the delivery of our 2022 General Election Canvass to the State Capitol. ☀️ You can find out more about the canvass here: https://t.co/PwpG4yOb2Dpic.twitter.com/tUj9NGi0XV
— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) November 29, 2022
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Maricopa County ended the public comment portion of its Monday meeting certifying the election results with compliments from a Democratic activist.
The final speaker after an hour and a half of public comments was Blake Lister: a 2020 Arizona State University (ASU) Barrett Honors College political science graduate who worked recently with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to lobby for the Equality Act. That legislation would protect sexual orientation and gender identity under the Civil Rights Act.
Lister said he is a supporter of the Constitution as instituted by the Founders. Lister thanked the county for upholding election integrity. His remarks prompted angry outbursts from the audience.
“As an American citizen, I am a supporter of our Constitution and the process for our republic our founders set out for us over 200 years ago: that we are a republic chosen for us by We the People through our Democratic process,” stated Lister. “While being faced with threats, including threats on your life Mr. Gates, this board, the recorder, and county employees, many of them temporary, worked tirelessly long, 16-plus hour days to count every vote in a manner as timely as possible.”
Prior to HRC, Lister worked as a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) field manager and a campaign assistant for failed Democratic congressional candidate Hiral Tipirneni. Lister also worked as an Arizona Democratic Party field organizer; an intern with the Arizona Advocacy Network (AAN), a political action committee that shuffles leftist dark money; and an intern for Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ).
Lister is also a graduate of several activist training groups: the Maricopa County Democratic Party’s Activist Academy, the Arena Academy, and Leading for Change programs.
This morning, I spoke at the @maricopacounty BOS meeting to uphold our democratic process and to thank our hardworking election workers.
Leading For Change (LFC) was founded by Beth Meyer: a former executive for the Center for Progressive Leadership and Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona. Meyer also founded and serves on the board of AAN.
Meyer formerly served on the boards of Defenders of Children, NARAL Arizona, Arizona American Jewish Committee, Arizona ACLU, and the Arizona Family Health Partnership Board of Directors.
Among LFC’s board of directors is House minority leader Reginald Bolding (D-Laveen). Also on the board is: Nate Rhoton, the executive director of One-N-Ten: an LGBTQ+ youth advocacy organization and longtimecollaborator with the Phoenix Children’s Hospital (PCH) transgenderism unit; Michelle Steinberg, public policy director and lobbyist for Planned Parenthood Arizona; Julie Rivera Horwin, former Arizona Education Association president and presently an National Education Association board member; and Roy Herrera, founding partner of a law firm that teamed up recently with Russiagate lawyer Marc Elias’ firm to prevent the cleaning of Arizona’s voter rolls.
Their board of directors previously included governor-elect Katie Hobbs when she was the Senate minority leader.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Arizona State University (ASU) will complete a five-year, $12.5 million CDC study to gauge the efficacy of the flu and COVID-19 vaccines. ASU’s Biodesign Institute will team up with Phoenix Children’s Hospital and Valleywise Health to recruit study participants.
In a press release earlier this month, ASU explained that the study would have two components: measuring the flu and COVID-19 vaccines’ effectiveness during the flu season, and vaccine-induced immune responses over time.
The first component will assess over 1,000 participants infected by the flu or COVID-19. In doing so, researchers will identify communities disproportionately impacted by the flu or COVID-19, as well as the genomic subtypes and variants present within the participants.
The second component will assess about 250 participants who received both the flu and COVID-19 vaccines. ASU disclosed that the purpose of this second component of the study is to better understand the impact of repeated vaccination on vaccine effectiveness.
The coalition’s clinical experts will be Joanna Kramer with Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Jeffrey Curtis with Valleywise Health, and Mario Islas with ASU. There will also be a number of team members hailing from various ASU schools and colleges: Vel Murugan, a primary investigator; Yunro Chung, a biostatistician; Efrem Lim, a virologist; Matthew Scotch, a molecular epidemiologist; Leah Doane and Cruz Cruz, health disparity experts; Mitch Magee, a clinical researcher; and Craig Woods, a clinical site manager.
Murugan said that the present state of the Valley makes it the perfect location for the study.
“Phoenix is a very fast-growing area with a diverse population, which is changing economically and demographically every day,” stated Murugan.
RAIVEN sites conduct randomized trials to evaluate flu vaccine efficacy on those aged 18-64 years old. This fall’s trial compares the efficacy of the recombinant flu vaccine versus a standard dose egg-based flu vaccine. Trial participants receive one of the two study vaccines over the course of two flu seasons: 2022-23 and 2023-24.
A recent CDC survey estimates 80% of healthcare providers (HCP) received a #flu shot during the 2021-22 flu season & 87% completed their primary COVID-19 vaccination series.
The other Vaccine Effectiveness Networks are the Flu Vaccine Effectiveness (VE), Influenza and Other Viruses in the Acutely Ill (IVY), New Vaccine Surveillance Network, VISION Vaccine Effectiveness Network, Respiratory Virus Transmission Network (RVTN), and Randomized Assessment of Influenza Vaccine Efficacy Network (RAIVEN).
Arizona is also home to study sites for the VE, IVY, RVTN, and RAIVEN.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Several federal government defendants have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit recently filed by Gov. Doug Ducey in his attempt to determine who has jurisdiction over land near the border within the State of Arizona.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Forest Service and its Chief Randy Moore, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and its Commissioner Camille Calimlim, and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas J. Vilsack argued in the motion that Ducey’s actions on U.S. lands “directly conflict” with numerous federal laws.
The motion to dismiss also argues that Arizona’s concurrent jurisdiction to land at the border does not convey a right for Ducey to occupy and use federal lands without federal authority. As a result, the State of Arizona must yield to the United States’ plenary authority over the lands, the motion argues.
Ducey will have an opportunity to respond to the motion to dismiss, after which U.S. District Senior Judge David Campbell will likely hold oral arguments in early 2023.
Also on Wednesday, Campbell granted the Center for Biological Diversity permissive intervention, finding the group has defenses to Ducey’s lawsuit “that share with the main action a common question of law or fact — whether the federal government may act with respect to the border lands of Arizona, including in the enforcement of federal environmental statutes.”
However, Campbell issued a warning to attorneys for the Center that the purpose of granting intervenor status “is not to convert this case into an environmental enforcement action or launch into broad ranging discovery on environmental issues.”
Instead, the purposed is to enable Intervenor to provide input on the claims and issues raised by Ducey. The judge further noted he will hold the Center “to its commitment not to unduly complicate this case, delay the proceedings, inject irrelevant issues, or repeat arguments made by the federal defendants.”
The Center has until Dec. 2 to file an answer in the case.
Ducey filed the six-claim lawsuit in October in an attempt to have the U.S. District Court determine important questions of law regarding jurisdiction over land near the border within the State of Arizona and the state’s own interests in protecting itself in the face of the crisis brought on by countless migrants illegally crossing unsecured areas of the border without action by the federal government.
The inaction of the Biden administration has resulted in “a mix of drug, crime, and humanitarian issues the State has never experienced at such a significant magnitude,” according to Ducey’s lawsuit.
Before filing the lawsuit, Arizona officials pleaded many time with the Biden administration to act, “but such pleas have been either ignored, dismissed, or unreasonably delayed,” the lawsuit notes. “Rather than cooperate and work together with Arizona, the federal government has taken a bureaucratic and adversarial role.”
Ducey responded to this inaction by directing that some gaps in the border wall be temporarily filled with double-stacked storage containers that will help control movement along the border.
The move got the attention of the White House, which now claims Ducey and the State do not have authority to undertake these types of protective actions. The six-claim lawsuit seeks answers to the authority of a governor to issue a state of emergency to protect the lives and welfare of Arizona citizens and their property.
In response to the lawsuit, the Center filed a motion earlier this month seeking to intervene in the case as a defendant along with the named federal defendants.
The Center contends the temporary barriers put into place by the State will block animal migratory paths as well as streams and washes. It also claims the temporary barrier effort will “trash the Sonoran Desert and public lands” while doing nothing “to prevent people or drugs from crossing the border.”
But the Center also alleges Ducey’s border barrier project is “part of a larger strategy of ongoing border militarization” that ignores damage to “human rights, civil liberties, native lands, local businesses, and international relations.”
Ducey opposed the intervention effort by the Center, while the federal defendants took no position on intervention, except that it be a permissive and not by-right status which can be discontinued by the Court if deemed necessary.
Earlier this month, Arizona made history with the election of its first “gender nonconforming” legislator.
Lorena Austin — a female, lesbian Democrat — won one of the two State House District 9 seats. “Gender nonconformity” means that an individual deviates from the expressive norms of their gender. Seth Blattman, another Democrat, won the other seat.
The first openly nonbinary or gender nonconforming individual was Illinois State Senator Mike Simmons. The first openly transgender individual elected to a state legislature was Virginia Delegate Danica Roem.
¡Adelante, Siemprè Adelante! Forward, Always Forward. District 9, thank you for giving me the greatest honor of my life. To my family, my friends, my community- THANK YOU! 🙌🏽💙#LD9#Lorena4AZpic.twitter.com/oGCZ2fVMzx
The majority of Austin’s campaign funds came from out-of-state, heavyweight Democrat philanthropists, and the leftist dark money network. Her lengthy list of endorsements include Moms Demand Action, a gun control group; Planned Parenthood; Save Our Schools Arizona, an anti-school choice group; Our Voice Our Vote; Human Rights Campaign; Arizona Education Association; NARAL; and Emily’s List.
Austin supports overriding the education spending cap, expanding affordable housing, expanding Medicaid, and establishing “clean” energy.
Austin also supports rolling back laws prohibiting males from joining female sports teams, as well as banning gender transition surgeries for minors.
Austin’s race earned national attention, but not for her LGBTQ representation. One of her Republican opponents, Mary Ann Mendoza, was the subject of an October surprise after pictures of her in blackface and brownface costumes surfaced. Mendoza was designated one of former President Donald Trump’s “Angel Moms,” a term used to describe mothers whose child was killed by an illegal immigrant.
Prior to running for the legislature, Austin waffled in and out of college for years, dropping out of Mesa Community College (MCC) five times. As she testified in an Arizona State University (ASU) promotional video, Austin discovered her identity after joining an LGBTQ activist community in St. Louis, Missouri and was motivated to get an education by the 2014 death of Michael Brown.
Upon returning to MCC, Austin worked her way up to become the student body president before transferring to ASU. She received a scholarship through a leadership program started by ASU President Michael Crow.
Austin graduated from ASU in 2020 as the dean’s medalist for the School of Transborder Studies.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
