On February 20, the Arizona State Senate passed HB 2196, so the bill is now through the legislature and on its way to the Governor. The bill repeals the 2013 omnibus election law bill. One of the provisions of that 2013 law made it extremely difficult for minor party members to get on their own party’s primary ballot, and literally impossible for minor parties to nominate candidates in their own primary by write-in vote. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
Awesome!
Not too awesome just yet. Word is the provisions will be introduced piece by piece in the future. The AZ GOP is out to get the LP.
The only provision that anyone in the legislature has suggested re-enacting is the part of the bill that says voters on the automatic mail ballot list who keep showing up at the polls and thus wasting their all-mail ballot, should be dropped from the all-mail ballot list.
But that was the provision that drew the opposition of the Democrats and the referendum petition.
Actually it wasn’t that they were showing up at the polls, it was that they weren’t voting at all. That is a fairly strong indication that they no longer exist at that address.
I did this twice, because I changed my mind between the time of marking and signing the ballot and actually mailing it. In both cases this was due to deliberately misleading information that was debunked shortly before the election. I still vote in EVERY election because it is my duty as a citizen, and I prefer to vote by mail.