Arizona Republicans scored a significant victory in court over the state’s top elections official.
On Thursday, Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma championed a recent court ruling from Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney over contested provisions within the 2023 Arizona Elections Procedures Manual (EPM). According to a release issued by the Arizona House of Representatives, “the court sided with Speaker [Ben] Toma and Senate President Warren Petersen in their legal challenge, declaring that the Secretary overstepped his authority and infringed on the Legislature’s exclusive lawmaking powers.”
🚨Arizona House Speaker @RepBenToma Hails Court Victory as Major Win for the Rule of Law and Election Integrity:
“This is a clear victory for the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the integrity of our elections. The Legislature is the lawmaking body of this state, and… pic.twitter.com/bYC7IIRDZK
Speaker Toma released a statement in reaction to the decision, saying, “This is a clear victory for the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the integrity of our elections. The Legislature is the lawmaking body of this state, and today’s decision reaffirms that foundational principle. Secretary Fontes attempted to overstep his authority, but the court recognized these actions for what they were – unlawful and unenforceable. I am proud to have led this fight to protect the constitutional role of the Legislature and to ensure that Arizona’s election laws are upheld as written. It’s a win for all Arizonans who value fair, transparent, and accountable election policies.”
President Petersen said, “A win today on our lawsuit against the Secretary of State. Judge said the SOS exceeded his lawful authority at least 4 times in his drafting of the elections procedure manual. The voter rolls must be cleaned up.”
A win today on our lawsuit against the Secretary of State. Judge said the SOS exceeded his lawful authority at least 4 times in his drafting of the elections procedure manual. The voter rolls must be cleaned up.
In a comment to AZ Free News, Petersen added, “We’re disappointed that the judge delayed the effective date of the AEVL provision but everything else was a big win. We will continue to do all we can to secure our elections and boost voter confidence.”
Arizona House Republicans shared that the court ruling “invalidated multiple provisions in the EPM, including:
A rule altering how voter registrations are managed for non-residents, in violation of Arizona statutes.
A rule excusing errors in circulator registrations, undermining strict compliance requirements for initiatives and referendums.
A rule limiting the role of county Boards of Supervisors during the canvassing process and improperly allowing the Secretary to exclude county results from the statewide canvass.”
While this past election cycle has come and gone, Fontes will have one more opportunity to fashion an EPM before the next one, and he has Democrat allies in Governor Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes to potentially rubberstamp his schemes yet again. Arizona legislative Republicans are awaiting the next installment of the EPM to ensure that any out-of-order provisions will be quickly discovered and challenged in court to protect the integrity of Arizona elections.
Fontes dropped the current EPM just before the statute-mandated deadline of December 31, 2023, after securing approvals from Hobbs and Mayes. For the first time since 1978-1979, Democrats controlled the top three statewide offices in Arizona (Governor: Bruce Babbitt, Attorney General: John LaSota, Secretary of State: Rose Mofford). One of the most significant consequences of securing this power trifecta is the ability to negotiate, craft, and green light the state’s Elections Procedures Manual without initial interference from opposing political voices, as required by law every two years.
At the end of January, Petersen and Toma filed a challenge in Maricopa County Superior Court over Fontes’ EPM, which has been ongoing up until (and through) this week’s decision.
When the EPM was published at the end of last year, Governor Katie Hobbs, who preceded Fontes, said, “Partisan politics should have no role in how we run our elections. This EPM builds on the 2019 EPM and 2021 draft EPM from my tenure as Secretary of State and will ensure dedicated public servants from across the state will have the guidelines they need to administer free and fair elections. Together, we can protect our democracy and make sure every Arizonan has the opportunity to have their voice heard.”
As Secretary of State, Hobbs was required to finalize the EPM in 2021, but a divided government shared with Republican Governor Doug Ducey and Attorney General Mark Brnovich stymied the quest to secure a green light for the manual. Hobbs and Brnovich were also mired in an ongoing political feud, which resulted in legal bar charges that the Secretary of State brought against the state’s top prosecutor and several of his attorneys. After receiving Hobbs’ updated manual, Brnovich sued the SOS “to compel her production of a lawful EPM.” Brnovich alleged that “the SOS failed to provide the Governor and Attorney General with a lawful manual by October 1, 2021, as required, and instead included nearly one-hundred pages of provisions not permitted under the EPM statute.” The challenge from the former Attorney General was rendered unsuccessful, and the state was forced to revert to the previous cycle’s EPM (2019) to govern the 2022 races.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
A new investigative film by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a public interest law firm dedicated to election integrity, has revealed the group’s findings following its inspection of hundreds of commercial addresses listed on Arizona voter registrations as residences. The group found gas stations, liquor stores, abortion clinics, vacant lots, a strip club, an Arizona Cardinals training facility, and more all listed as voters’ residences.
Under Arizona law (A.R.S. 16-152), voters are required to register to vote where they reside, and the form even specifically forbids the use of business addresses or P.O. Boxes. Under the text of the law, voters must provide, “The complete address of the registrant’s actual place of residence, including street name and number, apartment or space number, city or town and zip code, or such description of the location of the residence that it can be readily ascertained or identified.”
PILF began the full film with a simple statement indicating that this issue was brought to the awareness of Arizona officials years ago. In on screen text, they wrote, “After years of failing to identify and remove commercial addresses from the voter roll, PILF is documenting this widespread problem to force Arizona election officials to investigate these addresses.”
PILF President J. Christian Adams said in a press release,
“We have been warning Arizona election officials about people registered to vote from commercial addresses since before the 2020 election. I hope this film will embarrass election officials into investigating the hundreds of commercial addresses on the voter roll. Arizona always comes down to a handful of votes which is why it’s so important this problem is fixed and why Arizonians need to go out and vote early this year.”
The foundation observed that that the illegal use of commercial addresses for voter registration is hardly the only issue with the Arizona voter rolls in 2024, noting several issues that AZ Free News has reported on in the past. These issues include the “glitch” that incorrectly marked 98,000 registrants as having provided proof of citizenship, the 2022 controversy over ballot printing errors at 70 Maricopa County voting centers that caused extensive delays and eroded voter confidence, and the Attorney General investigation of the 2020 election that showed as many as 200,000 ballots were transported illegally without the proper chain of custody.
The investigation by PILF closely resembles a similar undertaking by the investigative team of Louder with Crowder in 2021 following the controversial 2020 Presidential Election in which reporters for the show exposed voters registered under “addresses that do not exist,” including empty lots, highway overpasses and yes, commercial locations numbering in the thousands.
Last Friday, the AZ Free Enterprise Club filed a lawsuit in federal court against Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes for failing to comply with the National Voter Registration Act’s (NVRA) mandate that he maintain accurate and updated voter registration records. Why? The data shows that there are 500,000 unaccounted for registered voters who are not qualified either due to death or moving out of the state, and in total, up to more than a million voters on the rolls who should not be registered.
Clean and accurate voter rolls are the bedrock of elections run with integrity. Ensuring only those eligible to vote may register and are on the rolls means that only eligible voters may vote in an election. It’s a basic principle: garbage in, garbage out. If we begin with bad data – ineligible individuals on the rolls – the system is susceptible to allowing ineligible ballots to be cast.
That’s why in 2022 we championed two landmark pieces of legislation to accomplish just that, and why, unsurprisingly, Marc Elias and the left’s lawfare machine immediately sued to stop these commonsense safeguards from going into effect. HB2492 ensures only eligible citizens who have provided proof of citizenship can register to vote and HB2243 requires regular and routine voter roll maintenance using several databases of information, with regular reports to the legislature of the results.
Both these laws are consistent with the NVRA’s mandate that states maintain accurate voter registration lists. But right now, Adrian Fontes is failing in his obligations under both, and that’s why we have filed a lawsuit in federal court to force him to do his job.
Four Counties Have More Registered Voters Than People
How do we know? According to the most recent census and voter registration data, more than 90% of the voting age population in Arizona is purportedly registered to vote. The national average is 69.1%. Why would Arizonans register to vote at an absurdly higher rate than the rest of the country? The only answer is that the state and counties are failing to adequately remove individuals who are no longer eligible, leading to bloated rolls…
It is no secret that an overwhelming number of Americans believe that only U.S. citizens should be allowed to vote in our elections. It arguably is and ought to be the first and primary qualification to vote. But what good is that requirement if it isn’t verified? In other words, without proof of citizenship, we are relying on a simple stroke of a pen or pencil on a registration form, checking a small box attesting to citizenship.
That’s why in 2004 Arizona voters approved a measure to require proof of citizenship before registering to vote. But, in the 20 years since, that requirement has been whittled away and now there are tens of thousands of people voting in Arizona elections (often referred to as “Federal only” voters) without ever having provided evidence of their citizenship.
In response to this explosion of ‘Federal Only’ voters, the Arizona legislature passed two landmark bills, HB2492 and HB2243, to require proof of citizenship and regular, enhanced voter roll maintenance to ensure only eligible individuals are registering and voting in our elections.
What happened next shouldn’t surprise anyone that has watched the left fight every reasonable voter integrity measure around the country. As soon as both bills were signed into law, a dozen liberal organizations and the Biden Justice Department sued in federal court, claiming that the measures were unconstitutional, illegal, and (of course) racist.
The case was given to Bill Clinton appointed judge Susan Bolton, and after a year of litigation, she issued a confusing, disjointed two-part ruling that is destined for appeal. And while a few positives can be gleaned from the decision, the bad and ugly from the liberal opinion far outweighed the good…
When all else fails, cry racism. That seems to be the playbook the Far-Left utilizes any time it can’t make a coherent argument against election integrity laws. And here we are once again. The latest accusations of racism come amidst a series of depositions along with closing arguments in a lawsuit filed by a cabal of liberal organizations against two commonsense voter registration laws: HB 2243 and HB 2492.
Passed in 2022 and signed by then-Governor Ducey, HB 2243 ensures that only eligible voters remain registered by requiring regular voter roll maintenance. And so far, it has proven to be effective—revealing that over 78,000 individuals have been identified on Arizona’s voter rolls as either noncitizens or nonresidents. When you consider how close some of our state’s races were in 2022, these numbers should be great cause for alarm. But of course, many of those close races went in favor of Democrats, so the Left doesn’t want to ask too many questions.
HB 2492, which was also passed in 2022 and signed by then-Governor Ducey, bolsters safeguards to our voter registration process to require proof of citizenship ensuring that only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections. Where’s the controversy here? U.S. citizens cannot go into France, Australia, or any other country throughout the world and vote in their elections, so why should citizens from other countries be allowed to vote in our elections?
Not too long after both bills were signed into law, the Left filed a lawsuit against them and recently made a part of the proceedings about…the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (who is not a party in the lawsuit)…
