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Arizona GOP gives 'red state' new meaning: Lawmakers gift themselves the right to destroy documents [1]
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Date: 2023-01-27
The House changed its public records rules Tuesday, and the Senate changed them Wednesday. The new rules give broad exemptions as to which records should be retained and for how long.
David Bodney, a lawyer who has represented the Arizona Republic in open-records litigation over the 2020 election review, told the Post, “I think it is petty, vindictive, and contrary to the plain interests of transparency and government accountability in Arizona.”
The investigation into the way that the GOP handled the 2020 election came largely from a review of Arizona’s records law via the Cyber Ninjas. Those records illuminated much of what we know about that election’s irregularities.
“It does seem like they’re just trying to find a way to be able to operate in the dark, which is incredibly anti-democratic. It’s anti-American, quite frankly,” Heather Sawyer, American Oversight’s executive director, told the Post. The rule change benefits all lawmakers at the expense of ordinary voters of all political stripes, she said; Arizonans won’t be able to find out what legislators are doing behind the scenes, regardless of their party affiliation.
And Arizona continues to play fast and loose in the state’s elections. The Guardian reports that an elections director in a rural county in the state who refused to certify the state’s 2022 elections resigned recently, citing death threats.
Lisa Marra, 59, the appointed elections director in deeply Republican Cochise County, Arizona, has served since 2017. She’s been a vocal supporter of elections in the state and received GOP backlash because of it.
According to the Post, during last November’s elections, Marra urged her GOP-lead county board members to certify the election despite losses by Republican candidates, and conspiracy theorists held up the process. The election was eventually certified, but only after a court order forcing them was filed.
Marra’s attorney wrote that her client faced “outrageous and physically and emotionally threatening” working tenor and “objectively difficult and unpleasant working conditions.” Her lawyer additionally said that Marra was told that in February, the board intended to have a meeting “where local election deniers will present testimony as ‘experts’ on election security and the use of voting machines.”
The fact that Republican-lead states such as Arizona are attempting to subvert elections and legally allowing lawmakers to hide documents is a frightening reality. Regardless of party, the shady ethics of election officials is a red flag that cannot be overlooked or overstated. After all, the future of democracy and our elections depend on it.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/27/2149620/-Arizona-GOP-gives-red-state-new-meaning-Lawmakers-gift-themselves-the-right-to-destroy-documents
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