Two sister bills have been introduced in an effort to repeal part of an emergency election law which was signed by Gov. Doug Ducey on March 3, but whether enough votes can be garnered for passage is unclear.
House Bill 2839 was presented to Arizona’s lawmakers last week as a way to address problems 2022 primary candidates are facing determining the minimum number of signatures they need on nomination petitions for congressional or legislative districts by the April 4 deadline.
But many of the 85 legislators who voted for HB2839 did not understand the consequences of Section 4 of the bill, which was added hours before the House and Senate voted. Section 4 significantly altered how manner in which political party precinct committeemen (PCs) will get into office this year.
Historically, precinct committeemen candidates get their names on the primary ballot by submitting a predetermined number of nomination petition signatures. Then the other voters in the same political party within that precinct elect their PCs.
The new law now does away with the petition signatures. Most importantly, it grants full authority to a political party’s local county committee to select the PCs from the interested candidate pool.
That was not the intent of the legislation, according to Senate President Karen Fann, who promised over the weekend to find a way to repeal Section 4 as soon as possible. However, some Democrats are hesitant to support the Section 4 repeal, despite the fact they voted for SB2839.
Many political insiders see this as a temporary delay while Republican legislative leaders take hits for allowing the problem to develop on their watch. In the end, it is expected enough Democrats will vote for the repeal, thus ensuring the required two-thirds “supermajority” margin necessary to make the repeal effective as soon as Gov. Doug Ducey signs the bill.
Some legislators have also demanded a full accounting from House Speaker Rusty Bowers and Senate President Karen Fann of who was involved in suggesting the new PC provision which removes voter participation in the selection of thousands of PCs across the state.
The demand includes naming all lobbyist organizations, legislative staff, and non-elected election officials who took part in the planning, writing, or promotion of the HB2839.
A major lobbyist organization at the Legislature is the Arizona Association of Counties (AAOC). Fann has stated that “the counties” were involved in drafting the language for HB2839, although some lawmakers say the Election Officials of Arizona (EOA) also had input at some point.
READ MORE ABOUT HB2839 HERE