Editor’s Note: This column was co-authored by Dean Riesen and Steve Twist.
As we are now in high political season, we propose a thought experiment before too many decisions are frozen in amber too early on. For Republicans and Independents, and even Democrats whose fond memories of the party run back to the ideals of the 1960s: How extreme is it to support a strengthened and secured U.S. border to keep dangerous people and products from flowing into the country?
A few more questions to satisfy the experiment: How ideal would it be for the United States to be energy independent? Who among any of us does not want to see our homeless population housed, free of addiction, and treated of their mental health issues? Who among us does not think that for the $900 billion Americans spend on elementary and secondary education, our scores and achievement levels should be much higher? Who here thinks the drug poisoning problem—at historically record highs—cannot be addressed and reversed? Who among us thinks our deficits and government spending priorities are keeping us on the track of economic prosperity and financial health?
Nearly any candidate that shares the obvious answers to the foregoing questions would be the kind of candidate nearly every Republican, Independent, and commonsense Democrat would take seriously and support. Especially against someone who answers each of those questions wrongly.
Now make the candidate who got the answers right a possible United States Senator in a nearly evenly divided United States Senate where the right answers to those questions have been frustrated and opposed by the modern Democratic Party.
The candidate who gets the answers to the commonsense questions above right is Kari Lake. While we did not support her in the primary in 2022, we have zero problem supporting her for the Senate seat she is running for today, here, in Arizona.
For those who disagree with some of her previous quips and misstatements, we urge thinking about any candidate who never uttered misstatements or mistaken views here and there. That candidate does not exist.
But, what you will find in Kari Lake is someone running hard against a representative and supporter of the values of today’s Democratic Party.
And that party has a Governor in Arizona that has called Republicans neo-Nazis. It is a party that turns a blind eye and deaf ear toward rioting and elevated to Vice President someone who encouraged such rioting and helped bail out the rioters. It is a party that nominates and defends Justices to the Supreme Court who will not answer the question “What is a woman?” It is a party that supports efforts to encourage children to physically change their biological sex and supports concealing those efforts from their parents.
Today’s Democratic Party is a party that believes 1776 was not our founding date and a party that believes people should be judged for the most sublime positions, privileges, and immunities based on their most crude characteristics, like their race, rather than their most refined and human characteristics, like their brains and their morality.
It is a party that supports the legalization of dangerous drugs and a party that thinks it just fine to teach 5-year-olds age-inappropriate lessons and behaviors. It is a party that believes it OK for men to compete in women’s sports and for men to enter and use women’s bathrooms and showers and locker rooms at every age.
Today’s Democratic Party is a party that shoveled hundreds of billions of dollars to the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world while it thinks we should create another official carbon copy of Iran or Syria in the Middle East, while, at the same time, stripping the rights and power of the United States’ greatest ally in the Middle East.
Today’s Democratic Party is a party that wants to secure other nations’ borders with weapons and taxpayer dollars but does not want to protect its own border. It is a party that wants to strip First and Second Amendment rights from law-abiding Americans but wants to elevate the rights of violent criminals above those of their victims.
Finally, as we view possible scenarios that could include a Democrat in the White House, a small Democrat majority in the House of Representatives, and a Senator Ruben Gallego as part of a one-seat majority in the Senate, the following could be enacted within six months: 1) Elimination of the filibuster, 2) Appointment to the Supreme Court of four left-wing Justices, 3) Admission of Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. as states, giving the Democrats a lock on the U.S. Senate with four additional Democrat senators, and, 4) An open U. S. border with unlimited immigration, and citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already in the U.S. This platform is what is “extreme,” by any definition.
We can rest on our own self-important codes of personal distaste for a candidate that stands athwart all this and abstain supporting her, or we can get over statements made in the past that, to borrow from Thomas Jefferson, “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg,” and get serious about defeating a much greater threat than one to our own moral superiorities; the greatest of threats to the greatest of nations. Ours. If one cares about something greater than their own self-interest, and if that “something” is this country, we ask you to support Kari Lake, as we are. Her opponent, after all, answers wrongly all the questions we raise above and supports the nightmare agenda we raise here. A vote against Kari Lake, just as a decision not to vote for or support her, is a vote for all that. Those who take their Republican Party, and this country, seriously, cannot allow that to happen.
The United States and Arizona election systems are broken. The last several election cycles have demonstrated the defects in the electoral system and defined the Democrat project to increase large numbers of favorable and questionable ballots and not actual, legitimate votes by citizens of our state and our nation.
Increasing numbers of illegal aliens vote across the country, especially after the last three years of intentional destruction of our borders by the current Administration. Without restating all the proofs and data indicating what has gone wrong with election integrity across America, what can the Arizona voting citizen do to not lose his or her ballot being honestly counted and expressing each legitimate citizen’s choice of how we are to be governed? Project this critical question to millions of votes cast in primary and general elections and the question of election integrity becomes very clear.
Until the state of Arizona once again becomes red in future election cycles, i.e., governed by those who strive to conserve (as in ‘conservatism’) the Founders’ foundational vision of representative government with honest elections, we must use the existing election system to win elections and thwart the dangerous leftist intention of Obama’s “fundamental transformation of America” with a permanent ruling elite and evolution of a Marxist-like governing class.
How do we do this?
For brevity, the following recommendations hopefully will block or reduce the dangerous election manipulations that have occurred in the past three Arizona (and U.S.) election cycles.
80% of Arizona ballots are cast by Mail-In-Voting. In Maricopa County, that figure is 90%. The Democrat focus is on the number of ballots cast and how they are counted rather than legitimate votes cast. They have rallied their voters to cast their votes by mailing in ballots early after receipt. By election day, Democrats can be 700,000 votes ahead in Arizona elections. ‘Proud’ Republicans who insist on voting on ‘Election Day’ in person are far behind already in state and national races. Witnessing the terrible performance of polling stations and incompetent voting mechanics in Maricopa County and elsewhere in Arizona in 2022, confidence for in-person voting on Election Day in Arizona should be zero, nada. Until the traditional voting methods are reestablished someday when political and Legislative power is capable of doing so, you should vote by mail in Arizona. If not already a mail-in voter, see the instructions below to get on the Active Mail-In Voting List (AEVL) and do so ASAP.
Voting by mail in Arizona means filling our your ballot early within days of receiving it at your address, ascertaining that the envelope is properly signed and then delivering it to your post office. Do not wait – fill it out, sign it and mail it at your post office. Proof of the ballot being received, your signature being verified, and your vote actually counted is your responsibility as a citizen of Arizona and America. Remember – you can be and You Are Your Own Poll Watcher.
DON’T BE A STUPID VOTER – what does this mean? DO NOT BRING YOUR GREEN MAIL-IN BALLOT ENVELOPE TO A POLLING STATION ON ELECTION DAY TO DROP OFF IN A BOX FOR FUTURE (YES, FUTURE) COUNTING. Hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters do this and it feeds corruption of the ballot counting throughout Arizona, especially in Maricopa County. Since the 2018 Arizona election, we have seen election reversals of Republican winners in the days and weeks after the announced results on the night of the actual election date. If you ‘drop off your mail-in ballot’ on election day at the polling station your vote will not be included in the evening results of the general election on November 5th or on the March 19th primary. THAT IS STUPID. When or if it is honestly counted for the final election results cannot be relied on. Ballot manipulation is the Democrat game. Don’t play it. Even better, don’t vote on election day in Arizona – vote by mail early and follow your ballot until you know that it is received, your signature verified and your vote counted. To follow your mail-in ballot and ascertain that your vote is counted after submitting it, see below.
How to be on the Active Early Voting List (AEVL) in Arizona if you are not on it already:
How to follow your Mail-In Ballot in Arizona to ascertain receipt by your County Recorder election center, your signature verification, and the counting of your vote:
After you have mailed in your Early Ballot (very soon after you receive it), follow your ballot at the following link: https://my.arizona.vote/AbsenteeTracker.aspx. This site gives each Arizona voter throughout the state the ability to follow his or her ballot and to ascertain that the vote you have cast has been legitimately counted. Information about your early mail-in ballot should be available within days of mailing it in.
Voters can also sign up for text messages and email alerts as part of the ballot-by-mail/early ballot tracking service. To sign up, visit trackmyballot.azsos.gov.
The Arizona citizen voter is strongly encouraged to use these two links and the services provided. As a responsible citizen, don’t forget – You Are Your Own Poll Watcher. You want an honest election? IT STARTS WITH YOU using the existing system smartly and consistently until we can reform the system for real confidence in future elections.
A version of this opinion article originally appeared in The Prickly Pear.
Recorder Stephen Richer is a far cry from Candidate Richer we met just 4 years ago.
When Stephen Richer ran for Recorder in 2020, he promised us “fair and competent elections,” “no rogue policymaking,” and “NO FIGHTS WITH VOTERS.” His commitment was that if we the people elected him to arguably one of the most critical offices in Arizona related to overseeing the 2024 Presidential Election, he would “further transparency and accountability” in the Recorder’s Office.
His legal fights to refuse to comply with public records requests under the guise of “it’s for your safety” are well known. However, when I received a notice in the mail that he was going to inactivate my voter registration, I thought surely, we could expect transparency for our own voter records! After all, he promised to follow the law, and ARS 16-168F specifically affords voters the right to public inspection of their own voter registration records. It even requires the Recorder to conduct this service at the “office of the county recorder.”
Per testimony on January 31, 2024 by the lobbyist representing the Counties, the voter registration record is quite comprehensive. It includes essentially a transcript of every action the Recorder’s Office took on your record and every action you took as a voter. It includes your signature records, voting history, address history, registration history, and even your affidavit envelopes if you vote early.
Knowing this, I thought this inactive voter misunderstanding could simply be cleared up by asking for a public inspection of my voter registration record at his office. My immediate concern was that there was some tampering with my record since USPS had not disrupted my mail, and to my recollection, I’ve received all the same mail as the other voters in my household.
On February 20th, I went to Recorder Richer’s office in the afternoon to ask for an in-person inspection of my full voter record, only to be told I had to schedule an appointment for a public inspection.
Ok. No worries. I am a reasonable person.
The next day, after I emailed for an appointment, I was told they closed down the public from inspecting their voter record until April 3rd – well after the Presidential Preference Election concludes. This means that the previous day I made the request was the last opportunity they offered for electors to view their records and ensure everything was in order.
My friend Sean Campbell said it best in reminding us what Mr. Richer promised, “In June of 2020, Stephen Richer, while running for Maricopa County Recorder, gave a brief speech saying ‘we haven’t had transparency, we haven’t had competency, we haven’t even had lawfulness, we haven’t had fairness in the Recorder’s office and in our election system.'”
In June of 2020, @stephen_richer while running for Maricopa County Recorder gave a brief speech saying "we haven't had transparency, we haven't had compency, we haven't even had lawfulness, we haven't had fairness in our recorders office and election system."
Can the 2020 Stephen Richer please remind this 2024 Recorder Richer guy what transparency, competency, lawfulness, and fairness mean?
Unless we can inspect our full record, we don’t know what signatures are actually on record or what the signature on our affidavit envelope that was counted looks like. With most voters voting on the early vote system, transparency in our elections with in-person public inspections of our records is the only security measure under the voter’s control that we have on our ballots.
What’s worse is that the voter roll cleanup Stephen Richer brags about is not even with actual returns of physical mail from USPS. He is removing voters without verifying they even received a physical piece of mail that was returned. Instead, USPS just sends him a digital file with voters to inactivate. He doesn’t even add the file to our voter record according to the Director of Constituent Services for his office. How many other highly active voters like me were erroneously inactivated through this lazy, digitized process?
There’s no excuse for Recorder Richer not to follow the law and allow voters in-person inspections of our full voter records in his office. There’s already a kiosk inside the voter service area. He also has conference rooms that can accommodate voters.
But these are not the only recent incidents where Recorder Richer has deliberately mismanaged his duties, disqualifying him from continuing in this role.
In the 2023 bond elections, Recorder Richer shut down voting locations hours early after going on news broadcasts that day, telling voters all locations would be open until 7 pm. This likely disenfranchised thousands of voters.
Maricopa County voters deserve better. We deserve dignity back in our elections instead of constantly being the national laughingstock. And at the very minimum, we deserve transparency without suppressing voters from seeing our full voter records. These are low bars that Recorder Richer refuses to fulfill. Now, he either needs to step up and fulfill them or move on to a new role.
Merissa Hamilton is the founder and Chairwoman of Strong Communities Action, also known as EZAZ.org, a non-profit organization focused on making civic action and education easy as pie. She’s an elected Member at Large of Congressional District 1 for the Arizona Republican Party. She’s the Executive Director of Save Arizona. She previously ran for Mayor in 2020.
Government leaders must be held accountable. That’s supposed to be the job of the mainstream media. But somewhere along the line, this changed. Many journalists employed by traditional corporate media started to twist facts to drive home a particular narrative. Others began disguising their own opinions as news. And some just stopped doing any real investigations altogether—choosing to protect our elected officials and government bureaucrats from any sort of real accountability.
Now, with fewer people trusting in the mainstream media, our nation has seen a rise in independent news media. We have a great one right here in Arizona called AZ Free News that has shown it is willing to do real research and investigation into what is happening in our state. And their latest investigative report shows exactly why independent journalism is critical for the future of our state and nation…
Criminals posing as asylum seekers are turning American cities into war zones.
The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, feared for how it tortures its victims, is setting up business in New York City, police sources reveal.
Gang members recruit migrants from shelters and as they come off buses from Texas, put them to work in retail theft rings or on mopeds, grabbing phones and handbags and roughing up pedestrians.
“This is organized crime. It’s just like the Mafia,” says Paul DiGiacomo, president of the NYC Detectives’ Endowment Association.
NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban warns of a “wave of migrant crime.” Democratic pols deny it. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says migrants “are looking for a better life.” True for many, not all.
NYC Comptroller Brad Lander accuses Caban of “fear mongering” and using a “Republican talking point.”
Migrants in moped gangs and retail theft rings, some carrying guns, are terrorizing the Big Apple, Yonkers and New Jersey.
Two-man teams snatch pedestrians’ phones and deliver them to Tren de Aragua stash houses, where professional hackers make fraudulent banking transactions and drain cash from all accounts. Then the phones are wiped clean and shipped to South America for resale.
A 62-year-old woman was brutally dragged down a Brooklyn street by one of these moped thieves who made off with her purse. When you see mopeds, step back from the curb and hug the building — advice usually needed in a third-world city, not New York.
A shopper at JD Sports near Times Square was shot in the leg by baby-faced, 15-year-old migrant Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa when a security guard tried to stop him from robbing the store on Feb. 8. Figueroa whipped out a .45-caliber handgun and shot into the crowd. He has since been apprehended by police.
The next job is to track down the ringleaders who armed him and sent him into the store. The teen had been living in the Stratford Hotel, a city shelter, with his mother and attending school. He is also a suspect in a Jan. 25 incident in Midtown and a Jan. 27 robbery in the Bronx. After his first run-in with cops, the shelter system should have been notified and Figueroa should have been evicted.
Chicago is also being terrorized. There, professional criminals enlist migrants from the shelters to raid luxury stores at the suburban Oakbrook Center shopping mall, 5 miles west of the city. These migrants wouldn’t have a clue where Oak Brook, an upscale suburb, is, or how to get there without the criminal masterminds.
South American gangs are turning suburban malls into danger zones, explains retired Riverside, Illinois, Police Chief Tom Weitzel. “You’re at one of the suburban malls … pushing your kids in a stroller” and you can get caught in the violence, he said in an interview with Fox News.
“A lot more crossing the border are criminals or have criminal intent than is being publicly said,” Weitzel added.
Paul Mauro, a retired inspector of the NYPD, agrees. The claim that Venezuela is emptying its prisons is accurate, he suggested in a separate interview with Fox News.
Blame President Joe Biden’s open borders, but also the soft-on-crime Democrats in New York and Illinois, whose policies almost guarantee that migrant criminals can rob and assault without ever going to jail.
Hochul sweetens the attraction by guaranteeing asylum seekers cash welfare benefits — something the federal government bars so state and local taxpayers have to foot the entire bill.
On top of that, New York City is court-mandated to guarantee shelter to all, something Mayor Eric Adams should seek to overturn. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny observed that “the network of thieves” lives mostly in the shelter system.
That includes the migrants who beat up two cops at Times Square on Jan. 27. They had a string of previous arrests but were still living in shelters, courtesy of N.Y. taxpayers.
Adams is imposing an 11 p.m. curfew at some shelters. That’s window dressing.
Providing room and board to the same people who rob and threaten us makes no sense. Once migrants get in trouble with the law, the shelter system should be notified and they should be evicted. The only shelter they get should be at Rikers.
The Statue of Liberty says, “Give me your tired, your poor.” It doesn’t say your lawbreakers, brutes and gang leaders.
Betsy McCaughey is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
If Adrian Fontes likes spending time in court, he’s going to have a fun time in 2024. In case you’ve lost count, Arizona’s Secretary of State has been sued three times over his Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) in just the last two weeks. That’s what happens when you produce one of the most radical EPMs in Arizona’s history.
At the end of January, Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Ben Toma filed a lawsuit against Fontes over a variety of provisions in his EPM that violate or conflict with current election laws in our state. But the party was just getting started.
Last week, the Arizona Republican Party, the Republican National Committee, and the Yavapai County GOP also sued Fontes for his blatant attempt to rewrite election law through his EPM. And on the same day, we filed our own lawsuit against Fontes over the promulgation of certain unlawful rules set forth in his EPM.
The reality is that, in his role as Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes is supposed to provide an EPM that gives impartial direction to county recorders to ensure uniform and correct implementation of election law. Instead, he prescribed certain rules without the power to do so and moved forward with an EPM that contains several “rules” that are unconstitutional.
