Arizona Republicans are looking to put an end to the state’s top election official’s ability to defend election laws in court. Recently added language to the state’s budget package, which could be passed by the legislature as soon as this week, deprives Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs of any role in elections-related litigation. The bill rests that authority solely with the state’s attorney general, who currently is a Republican, Mark Brnovich.
“The measure sunsets in Jan. 2023 — presumably because, come the 2022 election, the attorney general could be a Democrat. the sole purpose of the legislation is to give the GQP control over the November 2022 election results such that the election is now rigged, and no Dem can win without the AZ GQP overturning that win.”
I quite literally don’t want to share a country with the states controlled by the GQP Trump KKKult anymore. I want them gone and out of my life completely so we can just laugh while we watch them fail. Gone. Like, Constitutional Convention gone.
There will be lawsuits…it’s very likely unconstitutional to tailor a bill about the powers of an elected office based on the person in that office. Making it about Hobbs, instead of about some issue that they have studied and had hearings on that showed an issue with the performance of government functions, makes it ripe to have the legislation thrown out. And, any lawsuit should stop the legislation from being implemented, so it may sunset before it’s even in effect.
This is really dumb on the part of the Republicans, all they are doing is making themselves look like fools who are trying to block elections, and turning Hobbs into a hero who fights for the right to vote and fairness. The middle of the road folks who voted for Kelly will vote for Hobbs with that kind of record in her pocket.
They spent the last 50 years courting the dregs of society, promising them a place at the table, to the point that they outnumber the old guard GOP and thus they now control the levers of power for their party in each state. They’ve wound up chasing out all the actual political experts in the party and now they don’t understand (or care to try to do so) how laws and government actually work.
They expect that if they have the votes, they can do whatever they want, without limits and they don’t consider the possibility that it might be overruled by the judiciary because if you just want it hard enough, you’ll get it (prosperity gospel influences and such).
I’m sure it will be taken to court where the repugs will drag the process out until after the election and use the temporary law to tweak the results. Who knows what happens afterwards.
What steps can we take? Get ALEC and the other “think tanks” out of the business of writing copy and print legislation, although admittedly this isn’t one of those as it is so specific.
And if not, the only recourse is armed force. Unlike Trump, I don’t say that as incitement to violence.
If a political party considers it their right to change the freaking law every day in reaction to news reports, then there’s only one remedy — yes, the Republican Remedy.
The last man standing gets to write history. - Mitch McConnell
I’m sure the Republican AG will try really really hard to defend the election laws of AZ from attack by his fellow Republicans trying to kneecap them like Tonya Harding on a meth bender.
It’s really only a matter of time before they make votes for any Democrat not valid and the Democratic Party illegal. That’s how they roll in China and Russia.
It’s been a while since I read “How Democracies Die”, but I believe using elections rules and other ostensibly Democratic processes to ensure one party rule is one of the five characteristics of failed Democracies. The great majority of the Republican Party has given up on Democracy (and may have done so quite a while ago).
