Arizona: Agencies feuding over power to police ‘dark money’ groups | AZ Central

As next year’s statewide elections get closer, several Arizona agencies are locked in a bitter feud to determine who has the power to police so-called “dark money” groups that spend millions to influence races. The dispute is playing out in complicated legal tit-for-tats, but the heart of the fight is simple: Should the office of Secretary of State Michele Reagan or the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission, a voter-created body, play the role of enforcer? And is there room for two policemen? It’s unclear how the dispute will get resolved. Ultimately, courts may have to decide.

Arizona: Voter fraud in Arizona: How often does it happen, how is it stopped? | The Arizona Republic

President Donald Trump has called voter fraud an issue that may have swayed the outcome of the 2016 popular vote. Without proof, he claimed that millions of people voted illegally in the election. Through an executive order in May, he created a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The commission likely could replicate work done in Arizona since 2008. Since that year, state officials have examined hundreds of thousands of cases where someone might have voted twice in an election. After scrutinizing those cases, 30 were sent to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Twenty resulted in convictions. The path to those convictions started with the work of the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, now run by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Arizona: Judge won’t block new law Arizona targeting initiatives | Associated Press

A judge on Tuesday refused to block a new state law making it easier for opponents to challenge citizen initiatives, but she sidestepped a decision on whether the law violates the state Constitution. The ruling from Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens said opponents of the law passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature haven’t yet been harmed because there are no pending initiatives that would be affected by the new standard. “The Court finds this matter is not ripe for judicial review,” Stephens wrote. “Plaintiffs believe House Bill 2244 will affect their future initiative efforts but this Court finds that expectation is not sufficient to make this matter ripe for judicial review of the constitutionality of HB 2244.” The law goes into effect Wednesday and will apply to all future initiatives.

Arizona: Secretary of State vows to maintain voter notification records | Arizona Daily Star

On Feb. 22, Laura Sue Cates registered to vote in Sullivan County, Tennessee. Previously, she had been registered to vote in Arizona’s Coconino County, so the Sullivan County Election Commission sent Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan a formal notice to ensure that Cates’ voter registration would be removed from Arizona’s rolls. Every day, the thousands of voting jurisdictions in the U.S. share information about current voter registrations to guard against people being registered in multiple places. The Arizona secretary of state receives hundreds each week and forwards them to the appropriate county recorder, as voter rolls in Arizona are maintained at the county level. A sample of a week’s worth of these notices, received between March 1 and March 7, obtained under the state’s public records law, shows 240 voters were identified by out-of-state voting jurisdictions.

Arizona: Trump taunts states, like Arizona, that denied voter data to task force | Cronkite News

Arizona election officials had sharp words Wednesday for President Donald Trump after he suggested that states that are withholding voter information from a presidential commission have something to hide. “What are they worried about?” Trump asked, during remarks at the first meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. “There’s something, there always is,” Trump said. “We could say the same thing about him,” shot back Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez. “What is he hiding in his taxes?”

Arizona: State GOP sends ominous email seeking ‘voter’ info | The Arizona Republic

The Arizona Republican Party sent out an email Wednesday — and a similar tweet last week — that is raising some eyebrows about both the method and the timing. The blast email was titled, in screaming all-caps, “IMPORTANT INFO MISSING” and tells the reader that their “voter profile status has been marked incomplete.” It then directs the reader to fill out a form “in the next 24 hours to remain active in our system.”  The email is clearly marked with the state GOP logo and is signed by the Arizona Republican Party. It was sent to the party’s general subscriber list. Communications Director Torunn Sinclair declined to say how many people received it.

Arizona: Secretary of State denies fraud commission request for personal voter information | KVOA

Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan is denying a sweeping request by a federal voter commission for registration information of all voters in Arizona. President Donald Trump created the Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May after he claimed without evidence that 2 million to 3 million people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election. Last week, the commission sent letters to secretaries of state of all 50 states requesting all “publicly available” information of voters including names, addresses, birth dates, party affiliation, and last four digits of Social Security numbers. … Reagan said after she received the request letter on Monday she conferred with her attorneys and decided that releasing any information to the commission would not be “in the best interests of the state.”

Arizona: State settles lawsuit making voter-registration data more affordable | The Arizona Republic

Arizona has settled a lawsuit with a national voting-rights group, resulting in an agreement that allows the public to access voter information at a much lower cost. The settlement between Project Vote and the state was finalized late last week. Electronic access to the voter rolls will be available to the public at a cost of a few hundred dollars rather than thousands. For example, the price of obtaining the state’s database of about 3.6 million voters will drop from about $30,000 to around $500. Project Vote, a national nonpartisan voting-rights advocacy organization, sued the state, Maricopa County and Pima County to challenge the cost of acquiring voter-registration data after receiving bills for tens of thousands of dollars. Political parties get the same information for free, as is required by state law.

Arizona: Lawmaker: College kids ‘unfairly influence’ elections | The Arizona Republic

Arizona Rep. Bob Thorpe is getting a jump start on next year’s legislative session. His summer project? Restricting how college students vote. The Flagstaff Republican announced plans to introduce legislation next year to “address several problems with voting in Arizona’s college communities while ensuring that voting rights are preserved for all Arizona voters.” He alleges college students “unfairly influence” local elections by registering to vote using their college address, where they reside for “only six months out of the year.” That, he said, dilutes the votes of full-time residents. (And surely it has no connection to the fact that he and fellow Republicans narrowly held their seats in the district that includes Northern Arizona University.)

Arizona: Lawmaker seeks to bar college students from voting at schools they attend | Arizona Daily Star

Calling the practice unethical, a Flagstaff Republican lawmaker wants to bar college students from voting where they may live most of the year. The proposal by state Rep. Bob Thorpe would put a provision that students who want to vote would be able to do so only by signing up to get an early ballot from the voting precinct where they were living before they went to college, presumably the address of their parents. They would not be able to use their college address. And that would apply not only to those who live in a campus dormitory but even those who have off-campus residences. … A similar proposal by Thorpe introduced earlier this year died when state Rep. Doug Coleman, R-Apache Junction, refused to give it a hearing in the House Government Committee which he chairs.

Arizona: Counties threaten funding cutoff to force meeting with Secretary of State Michele Reagan’s office | The Arizona Republic

It’s Reagan vs. Recorders, again. This time, the dispute among Secretary of State Michele Reagan and the 15 county elections officials in Arizona is over who’s to blame for letting lapse a committee that makes sure the voter-registration database keeps working. But it’s really about simmering tensions over the upcoming creation of a new statewide voter-registration system — and who will be in charge. “I think the counties got tired of being pushed around,” said F. Ann Rodriguez, the Pima County recorder.

Arizona: Pima County judge: Ballot images not subject to public release | Arizona Daily Star

A Pima County Superior Court judge has ruled that ballot images produced by local voting equipment are “exempt from disclosure by Arizona election law.” In August 2016, county resident Richard Hernandez filed a complaint asking that digital ballot images from the upcoming primary election be preserved. It was then the county election department’s policy to delete those images, which are used to tally votes by the new system. A judge soon granted a temporary injunction mandating that the county cease deleting the images. In his May 24 ruling, Judge Richard Gordon made that injunction permanent, but also — citing the Arizona Constitution’s requirement of “secrecy in voting” and recent legislation — ruled that both ballots and images of them are exempt “from public disclosure.”

Arizona: Secretary of State looking to update state’s voter registration systems | KTAR

Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan said Wednesday her office is looking to update the state’s voter registration systems, but it has little to do with last year’s hack. “We’re updating, yes, and it’s not actually due to anything that happened last year,” she said. “It’s something that, by law, we’re required to go out to bid for this in 2017.” Arizona was one of the first states to introduce online voter registration and, 15 years later, it’s time to upgrade from the VRAZ-II, an aging platform that reached its peak use in the late 1990s. Reagan has issued a request for proposal for the development of the Access Voter Information Database. Bids should begin coming in during the next few weeks.

Arizona: Redistricting commission wins another legal challenge | The Arizona Republic

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission has won another legal battle over the political boundaries it drew earlier this decade. It could be the final legal skirmish in the current commission’s seven-year existence. On Thursday, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge rejected challenges from a coalition of Republican voters that the commission used the wrong process in drawing boundaries for Arizona’s nine congressional districts. Superior Court Judge Roger Brodman also rejected claims that the five-member commission violated the state’s Open Meetings Law as it went about its work.

Arizona: Were up to 58,000 citizens in Maricopa County denied right to vote? | The Arizona Republic

Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes is spoiling for a fight over voter-registration procedures meant to keep undocumented immigrants from voting. The newly elected Democrat says the restrictions may have denied as many as 58,000 U.S. citizens in Maricopa County the right to vote, a fear critics of the law argued at the U.S. Supreme Court. So Fontes is changing the process immediately. “We are not in the business of creating obstacles to citizens to exercise their constitutional rights,” Fontes told The Arizona Republic. But experts say his new process could break the law.

Arizona: Referendum campaign tackles citizen initiative measures | Arizona Daily Sun

Former Attorney General Grant Woods and former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson are leading a referendum campaign to overturn up to three proposals to tighten the laws overseeing the citizen initiative process. Voters of Arizona was registered at the secretary of state’s office Thursday morning as the committee tackling the referendum attempt on the 2018 ballot, political consultant Joe Yuhas said. “I think Grant and Paul come from different perspectives politically but yet they share a common feature and that is that as Arizona natives … they have participated in and been the beneficiaries of Arizona’s direct democracy that has existed since statehood,” Yuhas said. Yuhas said the committee will also simultaneously pursue legal action challenging the laws.

Arizona: New Maricopa County registrar wants to change Arizona’s reputation for voter suppression | Los Angeles Times

To hear Adrian Fontes tell it, the hopes of thousands of would-be voters are trapped in dust-covered boxes at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office. The boxes are filled with forms reflecting failed attempts to register to vote. Fontes, the new Maricopa County recorder, says those failures are the result of a strict interpretation of registration rules, and he intends to do something about it. Since 2004, Arizonans attempting to register to vote without showing proof of citizenship are put in a kind of voter purgatory, denied the right to vote as their county sends them reminders to confirm their citizenship.

Arizona: Former attorney general: Maricopa County Recorder Fontes’ voter-registration fix is ‘reasonable’ | The Arizona Republic

Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes has lowered an estimate of American citizens in the county whose voter registrations were blocked because they didn’t fill out the form correctly,basing his new estimate on further research into roughly 100,000 registration forms that initially were rejected by the office. Fontes’ effort to register citizens who were initially blocked was endorsed Wednesday by a former Arizona attorney general. After digging more deeply into the matter this week, Fontes said a non-scientific sample suggests the number of citizens who weren’t able to register could be closer to 17,000 rather than the roughly 58,000 originally thought.

Arizona: Ducey to Decide if Voter Registration Deadline Controversy Repeats | Associated Press

If Gov. Doug Ducey signs legislation headed to his desk, Arizona won’t see a repeat of a controversy that erupted last October after Secretary of State Michele Reagan set the last day for voter registration on a legal holiday. Reagan’s decision cost at least 2,000 citizens their vote in November and led to a federal lawsuit by state and national Democratic parties. A federal judge ruled the Democrats likely would have won but waited too long to file the lawsuit. Reagan refused to extend the Oct. 10 voter registration deadline even though it fell on Columbus Day. The Democrats noted there’s no mail service and state motor vehicle offices were closed that day and sued on Oct. 19.

Arizona: Restrictions on citizen initiatives came after years-long effort | The Arizona Republic

Four years ago, Arizona lawmakers passed an ambitious plan to curb citizen initiatives and make other substantial changes to elections. They said new rules were needed to reduce voter fraud and streamline elections. That didn’t sell with a coalition of citizen groups. They called the bill voter suppression, and set out to block it. They scrambled, circulated petitions and got the bill referred to the 2014 ballot, where the state’s voters could decide whether to keep it on the books or toss it. Coalition members were confident voters would kill it. So were lawmakers. When they returned to the Capitol for work in early 2014, they repealed the measure and thus removed the issue from the ballot.

Arizona: House approves Chamber-backed initiative proposals | Associated Press

Republicans who control the Arizona House on Thursday passed two measures that dramatically tighten rules on how citizen initiatives make the ballot and how they can be challenged, adding to a previously passed law restricting how initiative petition circulators can be paid. Together, the action by the Legislature reassembles a major catch-all bill pushed early in the year by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry in response to the passage of a minimum wage increase. Republican backers and the Chamber call the measures needed reforms to the initiative process. Democrats and voting rights groups call them an all-out assault on the initiative process that has been in place since statehood. No Democrats voted for the measures, and all Republicans voted yes.

Arizona: Dispute arises from state query about election system | Tucson News Now

At present, 13 of the state’s 15 counties are linked into the state system, but the two counties each maintain their own voter systems and databases. Pima County recently spent $4 million upgrading and implementing its system. The Secretary of State is exploring the possibility of replacing the statewide system with a more modern platform. The Arizona system was one of two systems nationwide that was hacked last summer. Following an FBI investigation, it was thought to be by Russian hackers. During the investigation, the state system, as well as the 13 counties on the system, were shut down for a week. “Maricopa and Pima Counties were able to keep working, processing voter requests, processing whatever we needed to do,” said Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriquez.

Arizona: Senate advances another initiative-limiting bill | The Arizona Republic

The state Senate on Wednesday approved a bill to curb the citizen-initiative process, following another controversial initiative measure that passed last month. House Bill 2244 imposes a “strict compliance” legal standard on measures that citizen groups want to bring to the ballot. What that ultimately could mean would be up to the courts. But in a lengthy debate, senators sketched scenarios in which it could head off potential problems, or could go as far as disqualifying a voter’s signature if he used a shortened version of his name instead of how it appears on his voter registration. The bill is part of an effort this year by Republican lawmakers, backed by the chambers of commerce, including the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, to put further limits on the process by which citizens can make law.

Arizona: Secretary of State Reagan to attorney general: Is what I did legal? | The Arizona Republic

The rocky relations between Secretary of State Michele Reagan and Arizona’s county recorders continue. The flash point: Voter registration. Last fall, and again in early February, her office tapped into the voter-registration databases run by Maricopa and Pima counties. The two large counties were perplexed — and more than a little peeved. They said this had not happened since a test on the system in 2010. Plus, Reagan should have forwarded whatever request for information her office was researching to them, instead of just logging in, Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes and Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez said. And to add insult to injury, they complained they couldn’t get answers on why Reagan’s office was, in their view, snooping in their data.

Arizona: Maricopa County report says 40,000 voter registration forms found sitting in boxes | Associated Press

A report released Thursday from the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office said 40,000 voter registration forms received before the 2016 election were left sitting in boxes by the previous administration. Under Proposition 200, Arizona voter registration forms are required to have proof of citizenship attached. Without it, the registrant would not be considered eligible to vote in the state. The forms found in the boxes did not have that proof. “It was the policy of the previous administration that if a voter registration form did not comply with Prop. 200 — and it did not show proof of citizenship — it went into a box after a letter went out saying, ‘We need more information,’” Recorder Adrian Fontes, who was elected in November, said.

Arizona: New Republican Effort to Target Arizona Initiatives Appears | Associated Press

Just days after Gov. Doug Ducey signed a new law opponents said will make it harder for citizen initiatives to make the ballot, Republican Arizona lawmakers are reviving stripped parts of that legislation that will make it much easier for opponents to challenge initiatives in court. The new proposal changes the legal standard required to keep an initiative off the ballot. It says the language in the proposed measure is subject to a “strict compliance” standard rather than “substantial compliance.” That will allow citizen’s initiative to be thrown out for mere paperwork or language errors, even if the proposed law complies with other respects to the law. The “substantial compliance” standard now in place allows such minor errors if the intent of measure remains clear.

Arizona: Senators to debate another bill limiting initiative process | Arizona Daily Star

Republican lawmakers are considering another measure aimed at the initiative process through which Arizonans can propose their own laws. The proposal up for debate Wednesday, March 29, would subject initiative organizers to $1,000-an-incident fines for violations of law committed by anyone they hire, or any workers of firms they hire, to collect signatures. Legislation signed last week by Gov. Doug Ducey banned paying petition circulators by the signature. Circulators can still be paid by the hour or some other basis. Not a single measure has qualified for the ballot in at least three decades without some use of paid circulators.

Arizona: Governor Signs Bill Targeting Initiative Signatures | Associated Press

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey wasted no time Thursday signing legislation that opponents say would make it tougher to get citizen initiatives on the ballot, but supporters say will reduce fraud in signature gathering. Ducey signed the measure into law less than three hours after it received final House approval. House Bill 2404 bans groups seeking to put an initiative on the ballot from paying petition circulators by the signature and makes it easier to challenge citizen initiatives in court. The governor’s action gives Republicans and the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry a victory in one of their top priorities of the year. House Bill 2404 was approved by the Senate Wednesday, with no votes from Democrats, and the House followed Thursday, also without Democratic support.