On Thursday, a judge disqualified tens of thousands of signatures offered by a progressive group in support of its sweeping initiative intended to weaken voter security.
The judge ruled in a case brought by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club that challenged the validity of many of the signatures needed to get the “radical initiative” on the ballot.
The Club filed the challenge in order to prevent what it believes is an effort to “upend Arizona’s election administration and voter registration laws.”
“Big news! The “Arizonans for Free and Fair Elections” ballot initiative is officially on life support after a judge disqualified tens of thousands of signatures, leaving it ~10k short of the ~238k needed to make the ballot, tweeted the Free Enterprise Club.
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s lawsuit argued that “well over half of the signatures on the election initiative were gathered illegally. And it includes evidence of the illegally collected signatures along with proof that many of the initiative’s paid circulators provided false information or failed to register with the Secretary of State.
“After analyzing over 45,000 petition sheets and 420,000 signatures, it’s clear that well over half of the signatures on this election initiative were collected in violation of state law,” said Club President Scot Mussi at the time the group filed the lawsuit. “That should be more than enough to invalidate this initiative.”
The complaint requested that the court disqualify any signatures collected illegally or by individuals who were not properly registered with the Secretary of State at the time the signatures were gathered.
The Free and Fair Elections measure would have specifically blocked election transparency by blocking independent audits of elections like the one conducted by the Arizona Senate of Maricopa County’s 2020 General Election.