Running Out of Time
A deadline looms, but no solution ... Bipartisan border policy backlash ... Thing about laugh.
Five months ago, elections officials across Arizona warned of a worst-case scenario situation where Arizona wouldn’t be able to submit its election results to Congress.
A 2022 law that narrows the threshold for automatic recounts will likely create a domino-like effect of delays that could make the state miss certification deadlines and potentially cause Arizonans’ votes for president to not count.
Three months ago, Gov. Katie Hobbs’ bipartisan elections task force came up with ways to improve Arizona’s elections. The ensuing report said lawmakers should withdraw the law and move the August primary election into July, along with other changes to the election timeline.
About a month ago, this year’s legislative session started.
And today, four days away from the Friday1 deadline2 to solve the problem before the election calendar commences, Democrats and Republicans finally introduced bills to fix the issue — bills that they know the other side won’t support.
The clock is ticking.
And in order to become law immediately, any bill will need bipartisan support and a two-thirds vote in the Legislature.
Right now, we’ve got two competing proposals — both of which appear dead on arrival.
Sen. Wendy Rogers and Rep. Alexander Kolodin introduced Republicans’ solutions in mirror bills, and the House and Senate will hold a Joint Elections Committee at 9 a.m. today to discuss the legislation.
The Republican bill would move up the primary election from Aug. 6 to July 30 while shortening the timeframes counties have to submit their canvass results and reducing the time voters have to verify their signatures and “cure” their ballots from five business days to five calendar days.
The Democratic solution, introduced late yesterday, doesn’t appear to be going anywhere at the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Democrats plan would keep the August primary election date the same, but revise the recount threshold closer to where it used to be before Republicans changed it. Democrats have also been reluctant to put ballot curing days on the weekends, as the Republican plan would do, contending it would limit access for some voters.
Hobbs has said Republicans’ solution is dead on arrival.
“At this point … we can't move the primary now, that means moving every single filing date and every other deadline. And I think we're well past the point that that can actually happen,” she told reporters last week.
And Republicans won’t budge on repealing the recount law itself.
“(W)e negotiated in good faith and agreed to accept this more complicated solution in exchange for signature verification and several other commonsense reforms,” Kolodin said in a press release.
The urgency of the situation should become acute this week, which will undoubtedly be filled with finger-pointing and fighting — and when that fails, perhaps some compromise.
But if lawmakers don’t get this one right, the accountability falls squarely on the shoulders of those who’ve known about the issue, and its urgency, for months.
Bipartisan-ship sinking: U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema told KTAR’s Mike Broomhead the narrative that the comprehensive border bill she helped negotiate would let 5,000 people a day in the country is “absolutely false.” That part of the bill actually says if 5,000 people try to come to the country, it would trigger an automatic closure of the border. The details of the long-awaited, bipartisan bill dropped Sunday, and Sinema said the provisions are like pandemic-era Title 42 policy “but with actual consequences.” Congress’ top House and Senate Republicans tore into the $118.3 billion bill, diminishing its chance of success, The New York Times’ Karoun Demirjian reports.
Chump change for billionaires: Attorney General Kris Mayes is satisfied with the Arizona Commerce Authority’s plan to only spend about $42,000 on corporate high rollers attending the Phoenix Open golf tournament this week while private groups cover the tab for other perks the state’s economic development agency used to cover, per the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger. Mayes said in January the ACA violated the state gift clause by covering lavish expenses at CEO Forums, but this year, it’ll only cover marketing materials, travel and catering.
We have some cool merch, but not $40,000 to convince people to join our business venture. Our funding comes from dedicated readers like you.
On brand: Only one recipient of the Justice Reinvestment Fund monies built into Arizona’s 2020 weed legalization law is led by Black people, who were the most likely to be impacted by strict marijuana laws before pot became legal, the Republic’s Daniel Gonzalez reports. The reinvestment fund collects a portion of marijuana sales tax and distributes it to programs for substance abuse prevention and economic development in disproportionately impacted communities. The Arizona Department of Health Services gave 18 nonprofits $7.2 million in the first round of funding, and the data show nine are led by people of color while 10 will serve communities of color.
Today in future vetos: Republican Sen. Anthony Kern is once again trying to bar the state Bar from “infringing” on political speech of lawyers who believe elections are stolen, the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers reports. His SB1145 passed the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, but Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed the same bill last year.
Today in local journalism: The alligator at Mesa’s Riverview Park that you might have seen making the rounds on Reddit is fake, but the town does have some interesting alligator lore, Jay Mark writes in the East Valley Tribune. On the Navajo Nation, potholes are a pain, and local Nikyle Begay tells the Navajo Times’ Boderra Joe that the pothole at milepost 93 caused at least five tire blowouts since last week. She has started collecting all the hubcaps that have flown off cars in hopes that owners will claim them. Finally, after Cochise County Judge John F. Kelliher Jr. got three reprimands from the Arizona Commission on Judicial Conduct in less than a year, the Herald Review’s Terri Jo Neff answers questions about whether voters can get rid of him before his term expires in 2026. They can, but it’s a difficult process, she writes. And he could also be removed by the Supreme Court, though that also seems unlikely.
“(T)o date no Arizona judge was even censured (a step up from public reprimand) nor suspended from the bench out of those 1,700 complaints in the last four years,” Neff writes.
Secret interviews for sheriff: The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is interviewing potential replacements for former Sheriff Paul Penzone today, though the interviews will all be behind closed doors. While the only real qualification is to be a Democrat who lives in Maricopa County, all the candidates have experience in law enforcement, including Chief Deputy Sheriff Russ Skinner, who has been acting sheriff since Penzone quit last year.
Tom’s daily stunt: Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne is giving schools additional homework as a publicity stunt for a bill that he’s backing by Republican Rep. David Marshall and Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez to make schools teach about the Holocaust for “at least three school days” twice between grades seven and 12. Arizona already has a law requiring that schools teach about the Holocaust, and Horne is now asking schools to report what they’re teaching by February 23 or get dinged on their report cards.
Hank has been very interested in road diets lately after his stretch of Osborn Road got considerably skinnier.
AZFamily’s Alaina Kwan, who doesn’t know how to ride a bike, has the backstory on how the new bike lanes along Osborn in a stretch containing three local schools got started after concerned parents started lobbying the city of Phoenix and ASU’s College of Health Solutions got involved.
The bike lanes are great! Even though we’ve basically only seen Mormon missionaries on them. But traffic in the area does hit a standstill around 5 p.m. and it’s debatable whether all the cars taking side-street shortcuts ultimately make the neighborhood any safer.
A lot of news organizations had stories about the rain that Arizona is expected to receive this week.
But the headline that Pinal Central went with really captured the spirit of Arizona — where anti-California sentiment seeps into even the weather reports.
That Friday, Feb. 9 deadline is more likely to be Thursday, since the Legislature doesn’t usually meet Friday.
Since the Senate’s deadline to introduce bills has already passed, the Senate Rules Committee had to make an exception to the rules to introduce the Senate version of the bill. Legislative deadlines are very flexible!
I've complained twice about the unsettling sexism and nostalgia in the "art," so today I must salute the efforts of the creepy little intern. Is that Kolodin at one end of the long table and Laura Terech at the other? She's a rising star for the Dems and was picked to present a Clean bill to show what the Christmas Tree bill of Kolodin and Rogers should have been. Focus, people; focus.
I follow border security issues closely and, while there seem to be some funding and process improvements in the Senate draft, I think most of us “outside the bubble” have to wonder why it does not more directly address the estimated 11M +/- illegal immigrants in the U.S. In particular, why not provide for an immediate and continuing shutdown (excepting only the humanitarian allowances and included in the draft) while the appropriate agencies round up and adjudicate/deport some minimum number of those already here - say, 5M - and, only when that process is successfully implemented, re-open? Put another way, I am guessing most of us realize there’s no hope of discouraging future waves of illegal immigration if there are no meaningful consequences for those who have already “cut the line” and, to the same end, are highly skeptical that the current administration (which deliberately opened the the floodgates the moment they took off office) will actually do anything meaningful on this front. I would add that, personally, I favor legalizing the dreamers and, as the first person in my mother’s family born in the US (after my grandparents, fleeing dire oppression, were refused admission in the 1920s and had to go elsewhere), also favor greatly liberalizing our work rules and immigration numbers (with an emphasis on the skill sets we need).