The Defeat Of Prop 412 Is An Important Win For Freedom, But The Battle Is Not Over Yet

The Defeat Of Prop 412 Is An Important Win For Freedom, But The Battle Is Not Over Yet

By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |

Last week, Tucson residents exercised common sense by overwhelmingly rejecting Prop 412 in a special election. And whether you live in the city or not, this is a significant win for our future.

Disguised as a new agreement between the City of Tucson and Tucson Electric Power (TEP) to renew the Franchise Agreement for another 25 years using the current 2.25% fee, the proposal included a number of Green New Deal pet projects. Had it passed, it would have added a 0.75% “Community Resilience Fee” to fund the costs associated with building underground transmission facilities—and “projects that support the City’s implementation of the City’s approved Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.”

That would have meant:

  • Lengthy construction projects removing driving lanes from roads (Road Diets)
  • Permanently inhibiting access to small businesses
  • Reducing personal vehicles by 40% by 2050
  • Establishing Tucson as a 15-minute city with local travel restrictions removing personal choice

Now, the citizens of Tucson have spoken. And it’s clear that they don’t want Green New Deal mandates that take money from their wallet and freedom from their lives.

But make no mistake about it. TEP and its leftist ally Major Regina Romero are committed to their “climate change” agenda…

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Americans Deserve A More Secure Voting System

Americans Deserve A More Secure Voting System

By Dr. Thomas Patterson |

Elections aren’t being stolen. But they are carried out under rules devised by one side for their benefit.

The Left loves our election system and why wouldn’t they? It has been a boon for them. They can win elections even when all seems lost. They have learned to exploit, through both legal and extra-legal means, the opportunities presented by bulk-mail voting, ballot harvesting, and lack of voter ID requirements. So, they falsely insist our procedures are virtually fraud-proof, and that attempts to improve election security are racially motivated “voter suppression.”

In fact, voter fraud is not all that rare and is easy to commit. It is hard to detect because victims are unaware that their vote has been canceled and so are unlikely to complain.

In New York, 63 undercover agents went to the polls, giving the names of individuals who had died, moved, or were incarcerated. All but two were given ballots, including young people impersonating voters three times their age.

A television reporter in Florida, on his own, turned up 94 non-citizens who had voted. Elections have been overturned because of voter fraud in Miami, Florida, East Chicago, Indiana, in Essex County, New Jersey, and Greene County, Alabama among other locales.

And who can forget Al Franken’s 312 vote victory in Minnesota’s Senate race, when later over one thousand felons (most probably Democrat voters) were found to have voted.

In 2020, the Pacific Interest Legal Foundation published a meticulous analysis of voter databases in which 144,000 cases of potential voter fraud were documented. These included dead voters, voters who had moved, and voters who supposedly lived in vacant lots, restaurants, and gas stations.

The report was sent to the 42 states in which fraud was uncovered. Not a single official or prosecutor asked for the relevant information for their state. Not one. The stunning New York undercover operation also garnered little attention, either from media or law-enforcement agencies. Neither did the Florida reporter’s discoveries. You see the pattern.

Fraud must be looked for to be detected and most election officials aren’t that enthusiastic about investigating for fraud. Why give yourself a black eye?

Honest researchers admit no one knows how much fraud is out there. Defenders of the status-quo like to point out the lack of proven fraud cases associated with mail-in voting, but unless someone confesses, the crime is essentially non-detectable.

Look at how bulk-mail compares with in-person voting, long the gold standard of election security. At the voting site, voters are protected from undue influence. Only after the list of eligible voters is checked and their ID is presented are they given a ballot. They are monitored while they vote. The secrecy of the ballot is maintained at all times. Finally, a formal chain of custody assures that ballots are handled securely until counted.

By contrast, bulk-mail voting, in Arizona and other states, begins with unrequested ballots being mailed to millions of names on poorly maintained voter lists, some of whom don’t give a hoot about voting. Most ballots are received by their intended recipients, voted, and returned. But others get lost in the mail or are delivered to people who have moved or died. Yet others go to voters, some mentally incapacitated, who are “helped” by third parties to cast their vote. Some ballots are even sold.

Many of the votes are returned by “ballot harvesting,” where party activists collect the ballots and then return them or place them in a dropbox. There are no chain of custody violations, because there is no chain of custody.

Finally, signature matching is used as a substitute for actual ID verification. But signature matching is an imprecise “art”—with no objective standards—which has been demonstrated many times to be unreliable.

Bulk-mail voting is popular and growing, both with those who innocently appreciate its convenience and with those who cherish the inexplicable election wins that can be achieved by it.

But the value of a vote in a democratic society depends on the integrity with which it is cast and counted. A majority of Americans don’t believe their elections are secure, nor will they until we reject voting processes that are so porous to fraud and deceit.

Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.

Why Are There Still Uncounted Ballots From The 2022 Election?

Why Are There Still Uncounted Ballots From The 2022 Election?

By Jeff DeWit |

Election integrity is crucial for our Constitutional Republic and is rooted in the understanding that all legal votes will be counted. Our American elections should be secure, transparent, and honest.

Arizona voters are currently in a situation where Democrats are fighting against efforts to allow lawful votes from being counted in what has turned out to be the closest statewide race in Arizona history, the Attorney General race between Republican Abe Hamadeh and Democrat Kris Mayes.

Sometimes when voters go to the polls, they are required to use a “provisional” ballot but are promised by law that their vote will still count. Shockingly, there are currently over 9,000 provisional ballots that were never counted in the Attorney General race. This race is separated by just 280 votes out of 2.5 million votes, and Arizonans deserve to have every vote counted. Many of these voters are high-propensity voters that have voted in previous elections, but their votes are being erroneously disenfranchised from the voting process. Provisional ballots have been ordered by the courts to be opened and counted in the past and should be in this case as well. In some cases, these voters were strangely registered in a county other than their county of residence without their knowledge or intent.

To make matters worse, back in late December, the legal team for Hamadeh discovered that Gov. Katie Hobbs, (then Secretary of State) withheld valuable evidence regarding vote totals being incorrectly tabulated in Pinal County. There is good reason to believe that had this been known to the judge overseeing Hamadeh’s December trial, he would have ruled for a proper inspection of the ballots to ensure every legal vote was being counted, including the provisional ballots.

Why they weren’t counted in the first place remains a mystery. Some say it was purposeful. There are claims that since the election was down to a 280-vote margin for Democrat Mayes and falling fast, the Democrat Secretary of State and Democrat Recorder just decided to stop counting before the results flipped.

The same individuals who argued to have ALL votes counted (not just legal votes) prior to the election taking place are the same individuals who now refuse to count the outstanding provisional ballots.

Since the provisional ballots were breaking 70% Republican on Election Day, the race was within moments of flipping to a Republican victory had they not stopped counting. Whatever the reason that the counting stopped, what is undoubtedly true is that ALL the ballots need to be counted.

When this is added to the latest news last week from Pinal County (see stories regarding the Pinal County elections director knowingly seeing glaring errors and inaccuracies in the votes, cashing out and fleeing the state), this appears to at least be a case of gross negligence. Clearly, the uncounted provisional ballots should be counted.

Understanding precedent is also important here. This would not be the first time in Arizona’s history that an election was overturned after an election lawsuit. In 1916, the race for governor was ultimately overturned and the legitimate winner rightfully took office 13 months after the election. Similarly, in the 1996 race for Yuma County Board of Supervisors, the election was eventually overturned after nearly a year of litigation.

The future of our Constitutional Republic depends on it, and the Arizona Republican Party will continue to fight for ELECTION INTEGRITY. The best course of action is undoubtedly to clean up the voter rolls. However, in the interim, it is imperative that we count all provisional ballots. Everyone should be demanding the same from our government: Let ALL of the voters be heard by letting ALL of the votes be counted.

Jeff DeWit is the Chairman of the Arizona Republican Party. Previously, he was the Chief Financial Officer for NASA and the elected State Treasurer of Arizona, as well as C.O.O. & C.F.O. of the Trump Campaign in 2016, and C.O.O. again in 2020.

DANIEL MCCARTHY: Republicans Have A Clear Road To The White House In 2024. Will They Be Smart Enough To Take It?

DANIEL MCCARTHY: Republicans Have A Clear Road To The White House In 2024. Will They Be Smart Enough To Take It?

By Daniel McCarthy |

The field of Republican presidential hopefuls grows larger by the week. But do any of them stand a chance of beating Joe Biden next year?

The president’s approval ratings remain anemic. He can take comfort, though, by thinking back to what happened last year.

Every indication pointed to a Republican landslide in the 2022 midterms. Yet the polls and pundits were wrong. The GOP barely scraped together a House majority and actually lost a Senate seat.

Unless Republicans figure out what went wrong in November, they risk a similar humiliation in 2024 when their nominee takes on Biden. In this political mystery, there are all too many suspects. Many seem obvious: The GOP nominated bad candidates. Voters wanted to punish Donald Trump. Women alarmed by the overturning of Roe v. Wade flocked to the Democrats. Or maybe the polls were just wrong.

In a meticulous study for RealClearPolitics, the political scientist James E. Campbell considers and rejects each of those explanations.

If the nominees were so bad, why did they poll so well?

If voters wanted to rebuke Trump, why didn’t that hurt Republican numbers long before Election Day?

Most attempts to account for the “red wave’s” failure to swell fall short for the same reason. If voters soured on the GOP for whatever reason, polls should have picked up on their feelings. The trend should have been visible in advance.

Yet the polls weren’t exactly wrong, according to Campbell. They were inadequate.

A poll isn’t a prediction; it’s a survey of a limited number of respondents. Reputable polls try to survey the most likely voters. Last year, that led them astray.

Campbell proposes a “Breakwater Theory” of the 2022 election. In eight key states, which made the difference between the predicted red wave and the eventual red puddle, Democrats beat the polls by mobilizing unlikely voters.

Those eight states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Washington and New Hampshire — all had “Democrat-friendly easy and early mail-in voting rules,” Campbell notes. And Democrats maximized their opportunity by concentrating midterm spending in those states.

Seven of those eight states had Senate races, and as Campbell reports, “The Democratic Party and its supporting outside groups and individuals spent in excess of $700 million on these seven races, over $200 million more than Republicans spent.”

There is more in Campbell’s analysis. But the bottom line is that Democrats picked their battles more wisely than Republicans did.

Extra campaign spending and accommodating election rules brought out marginal Democratic votes that pollsters mostly missed. Those eight states were the breakwater that stemmed the red tide.

Two Republican countermeasures for 2024 require no imagination. The party has to target its spending better.

And as much as the GOP would like to see stricter election laws, it must play the game by the rules now in place. That means pouring resources into getting out the early vote and mail-in vote for Republican candidates, rather than conceding those categories to the Democrats.

But another smart tactic goes against one of the most cherished cliches of campaign consulting. With good reason, campaign professionals tell their clients to “hunt where the ducks are.” Look for voters where you already know you have support. Don’t waste limited resources hunting in unlikely places.

In 2016, however, Donald Trump defied the experts’ advice. He ran an old-fashioned in-person campaign, showing up in places that hadn’t seen a candidate from either party in years, if not decades. His roving rallies were in contrast to the familiar circuit Hillary Clinton followed. And they won him states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that hadn’t gone Republican since the 1980s.

COVID-19 worked to Joe Biden’s advantage in 2020. His presence on the campaign trail wasn’t much missed at a time when most Americans were avoiding public gatherings. And while Trump held some rallies, especially toward the end of the campaign, he couldn’t do what he had done in 2016.

The Republican nominee will have to do it in 2024.

Just as the GOP has to compete with Democratic mail-in and early-vote efforts, Biden will be competing in a sport he would rather not play if the Republican forces him to take to the trail in state after state.

Donald Trump enjoys that game. Ron DeSantis is young enough that he should play it well. The contrast between his youth and Biden’s senescence will only be more striking when voters witness it firsthand.

Yet the most important thing is that Republicans be as smart and enterprising about mobilizing less likely voters as Democrats were last year.

Even as they aim to beat him in next year’s primaries, Trump’s rivals must learn from his example. They have to find unlikely voters in unlikely places.

The road to the White House runs through factory towns and flyover country.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Daniel McCarthy is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com.

Governor Hobbs Thumbs Nose At Election Integrity And American Manufacturing

Governor Hobbs Thumbs Nose At Election Integrity And American Manufacturing

By Ken Blackwell |

The integrity of our electoral process is vital to maintaining the foundations of democracy. Reliable and secure voting machines play a crucial role in the faith, trust, and confidence of our elections. Knowing and understanding this, the Arizona Legislature just passed HB 2613, which would have mandated voting machines used in state elections be made in America. Furthermore, this legislation would have required all those voting machines to have 100% of their parts and components sourced and assembled in the U.S.

Unfortunately for the people of Arizona, Governor Hobbs vetoed the legislation. In doing so, she turned her back on American manufacturing and election integrity.

The call for products to be made in America is not new. In fact, during his State of the Union address in 2023, President Biden emphasized the importance of domestic manufacturing, highlighting how American-made products would benefit the country’s economy and ensure national security. The proposed legislation in Arizona would have aligned with this vision, as it promoted the manufacturing of voting machines in the U.S., creating jobs and strengthening the domestic industry while simultaneously enhancing election security.

One of the primary benefits of requiring voting machines to be made in America is that it enhances election security. By mandating that all components are sourced and manufactured in the U.S., the legislation would have ensured that voting machines are built to the highest security standards, making them less susceptible to hacking, interference, and tampering. And if history is any guide and issues arise with machines on Election Day, it is much easier to find out what happened if the voting machine manufacturing plant is located in Buckeye and not Beijing. It also would have guaranteed transparency in the manufacturing process and ensured that any potential vulnerabilities could be addressed before the machines were used for elections. 

Moreover, American-made voting machines would have given voters greater confidence in the electoral process, particularly at a time when concerns about election integrity are rising. By increasing transparency and accountability, these machines would help to alleviate doubts and promote trust in the democratic process.

Finally, the legislation would have allowed for a transition period before full implementation, ensuring a smooth transition and minimizing any potential disruptions to the electoral process. This provision would have ensured sufficient time for voting machine manufacturers to meet the new requirements, which would have minimized the impact on existing voting systems.

Requiring voting machines used in Arizona to be made in America is a sensible move that benefits everyone. By enhancing election security, increasing transparency, promoting domestic manufacturing, and supporting the American economy, this legislation would have represented a significant step toward ensuring the integrity of the democratic process. As President Biden emphasized in his State of the Union address, everything made in America benefits the country. Clearly, Governor Hobbs’ veto signals she does not support American workers, American manufacturing, or election integrity. The real question Arizonans have to ask is, “Why?”

Ken Blackwell serves as Chairman, Center for Election Integrity for the America First Policy Institute (AFPI).