Potential Voter Disenfranchisement Remedy Denied After Senator Mark Kelly Intervenes

Potential Voter Disenfranchisement Remedy Denied After Senator Mark Kelly Intervenes

By Corinne Murdock |

A court ruled against a request to extend Maricopa County polling hours despite mass voting machine failures, after Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) petitioned to reject the request. Kelly is in a highly contested race against one of the GOP candidates that filed suit, Republican challenger Blake Masters.

Two Republican candidates, Masters and Kari Lake, filed an emergency request on Tuesday afternoon to extend the polling hours to 10 pm, after the mass failure of tabulation machines across the county for over eight hours. This extensive failure resulted in issues such as voters spoiling ballots, leaving without voting, or unwillingly casting a provisional ballot. 

One of the lawyers that filed the case, Harmeet Dhillon remarked that Kelly’s intervention was hypocrisy given his public commitments to thwarting voter disenfranchisement. 

“Goes to show you that Democrats’ platitudes about voting rights are often situational, at best,” said Dhillon.

A lawyer for the Arizona GOP, Alex Kolodin, called the court’s rejection “unfortunate” in an interview with “The Conservative Circus.” Kolodin shared that frustrated voters left polls, or were forced to cast a provisional ballot after they checked in at a malfunctioning vote center. The law doesn’t allow for voters to cast a ballot at another polling location after they’ve checked in at one location.

“The campaigns tried to explain to the judge that this was a very unique situation with this widespread issue where voters really were deprived of the right to vote and that made it a unique circumstance that warranted keeping the polls open a couple extra hours,” said Kolodin.

Kolodin said that at least 33 to 40 percent of vote centers were affected by tabulation machine failures. Kolodin stated that the timing marks on the ballots likely weren’t printed properly, which meant the tabulators couldn’t read them.

Kolodin added that printers have been a major issue for Maricopa County since the 2020 election, and were at the root of the SharpieGate controversy.

“It’s funny, the county has known about ballot printing issues for two years,” said Kolodin.

Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.

Democrats: January 6 Disqualifies Arizona’s GOP Candidates From 2022 Midterm Election

Democrats: January 6 Disqualifies Arizona’s GOP Candidates From 2022 Midterm Election

By Corinne Murdock |

A Democrat-backed nonprofit wants State Representative Mark Finchem (R-Oro Valley), Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05), and Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ-04) disqualified from the upcoming midterm election for organizing the January 6 protest. 

Arizona State University (ASU) law professor and legal expert Ilan Wurman told “The Conservative Circus” that the lawsuit not only misinterprets constitutional law but represents the bad habit of both parties to weaponize the Constitution.

“Just after the Civil War, this clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted to prevent individuals who had been office holders, federal and state office holders, who had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, who then seceded from the Union, unconstitutionally seceded from the Union, and then took up arms against the government of the United States. By the way, that is an insurrection,” explained Wurman.

The nonprofit, Free Speech for People, invoked the Fourteenth Amendment to argue that Finchem, Biggs, and Gosar were responsible for the U.S. Capitol intrusion because they helped organize the preceding protest.

The lawsuit against Finchem, Biggs, and Gosar is part of a national campaign to “ban insurrectionists from the ballot” under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment: the “14Point3 Campaign.” Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA-14) and Congressman Madison Cawthorn (R-NC-11) also face lawsuits under the campaign. Last month, a federal judge in North Carolina ruled in favor of Cawthorn. 

Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment reads as follows:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” 

The nonprofit behind the lawsuit, Free Speech for People, also filed another lawsuit last month against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) concerning the debunked Russiagate collusion.

Finchem called the lawsuits “desperate.”

Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.