On Voting & Voting Rights
Voting Rights
Arizona should strive to have the highest voter turnout in the nation. It is unnecessary to require citizens to register to vote a full month in advance. While that may have been necessary at one point in order to facilitate the printing of ballots and manually updating voter registrations in the official voter rolls, such inconveniences are no longer necessary and should be discarded as an undemocratic impediment to exercising one's right to vote. California, despite also having a voting system largely based around voting-by-mail, allows voter registration until 14 days before election day. Some states, such as Illinois, allow voter registration up to the day of the election at so-called 'grace period' locations. I would go further and join the progressive vanguard - I will propose and vote for legislation that would automatically register every citizen resident of the state of Arizona on their 18th birthday unless they specifically ask not to be placed on the voter rolls, and automatically update their registration when they change their address.
5 hour lines to vote as were recorded at some precincts in Maricopa County during the Presidential Preference Election are a national embarrassment to the state of Arizona. While lines of that length were not reported in Pima County, vigilance is necessary to make sure that residents are not waiting to exercise their right to vote. It is my view that lines of this length constitute an Unconstitutional Poll Tax in violation of the 24th Amendment, levied in the form of one's time, instead of monetary requirements to vote. Particularly for poor individuals who may find it difficult and/or costly to schedule time off from work, or disabled people who may not be physically capable of such lines, long lines suppress voters from exercising the right to vote and damage people's faith in the democratic process. The first priority of a democratic government is to ensure the right of all people to free and fair elections. We must make sure to spend the necessary money to ensure that each person can exercise their right to vote, and I condemn the hateful victim-blaming testimony of Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell blaming the lines on voters who chose to exercise their right to vote in-person instead of by mail.
It is also time to revoke discriminatory and racist voter ID laws. Despite the specter of in-person voter fraud at the polls, all available evidence suggests that in-person voter fraud at the plling place, the only type of fraud that would be prevented by voter ID laws, is incredibly rare, occuring in only a small handful of cases per billion ballots cast. Meanwhile, other types of election fraud such as that resulting from easily-hacked voting machines and voters being denied the right to vote because of lack of access to ID is far more prevalent. Even though politicians harp about the relative 'ease' of securing a government-issued ID to vote, we must acknowledge that for people working two jobs, or who have inflexible working hours, doing so can incur significant cost. Taking several hours off during normal business hours to wait at the DMV is simply not an option for those for whom a loss of $25 in foregone wages and another $20 in fees to get an ID card would pose financial hardship. And, given our system of voting by mail, it isn't even effective, as voters can call for a mail-in ballot and return the ballot without anyone checking for identification that the ballot was filled out by the proper responder.
It is also imperative that we take steps to ensure that all provisional ballots are verified and counted by the various county recorder offices throughout the state. While the Help America Vote Act requires that states offer voters the chance to vote provisionally in the event that their voter registration, polling place, or party affiliation is not properly marked in the voter rolls, the act does not place any requirement on the states to actually validate and count said ballots. It is time to rectify the flaw in the federal legislation by requiring that county recorders take steps to verify all provisional ballots and count all valid ballots. We must also ensure the accuracy of their voter rolls, provide end-to-end encryption of voter rolls, and increase the security of Service Arizona's online voter registration program to ensure that hackers with stolen voter information do not have the ability to maliciously tamper with official records.
As legislator, I am also ready to fight for legislation that will automatically restore voting rights to all ex-cons after they have completed their sentence and are no longer on parole or probation. Ours is one of only a handful of states that permanently disenfranchises citizens for having a felony conviction, part of a series of state laws passed during the Nixon administration to suppress the anti-war left and minorities from participating in the democratic process. There is no legitimate reason whatsoever why we continue to punish ex-cons for decades after having completed their sentence - such practices marginalize people for their past mistakes for years after the fact. It is my view that once a person has completed their sentence and paid their dues to soceity, that they must be allowed to return to society with their voting rights intact.
Ban Closed Primary Elections
It is not acceptable when we have budgetary shortfalls, teachers being woefully underpaid, and massive closures of polling places, primarily in Maricopa County, that the state takes it upon itself to subsidize and fund primary elections at taxpayer expense, particularly when a full third of registered Arizona voters are ineligible because they either registered as independent, no party preference, or with either a smaller political party that did not hold a primary election. While a move to implement approval voting will eventually render primary elections unnecessary and will free up those funds for other purposes, until that system has been implemented, we must work to ensure that independent and unaffiliated voters have representation in the Presidential preference elections, as well as in state and local primaries. I will propose legislation that requires political parties who wish to hold primary elections, including for President, at taxpayer expense to allow unaffiliated voters to select any ballot of their choosing. I will also propose a revision to current statute that would require poll workers to ask unaffiliated voters if they would like to vote on a certain party's ticket, rather than putting the onus on the voter to request a crossover ballot.
A particularly disturbing account of the Presidential Preference Election held on March 22nd also revealed a substantial number of witnesses who had properly registered to vote and affiliated in advance of the states's registration deadline, only to be told that their vote would not count because they had been improperly recorded in the voter rolls as either independent, or with a party other than the one for which they registered. I would launch an independent audit into each county's recorder's office to ensure that all voter databases are properly encrypted and to ensure that no individual can change a person's voter registration without their express consent. This also includes adding additional identity verification systems on Service Arizona to ensure that an individual or entity with access to hacked voter information cannot maliciously act to change a person's voter registration for political benefit.