The Arizona Free Enterprise Club led the fight against the measure that many believed would weaken Arizona’s election integrity.
Arizona Free Enterprise Club President Scot Mussi said the Supreme Court correctly determined that Free and Fair lacked enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
“The ruling today vindicates what we knew all along: the radical Free and Fair election initiative lacked enough lawful signatures to qualify for the ballot,” said Mussi in a press release. “The other side knew it too, and that is why their lawyers tried to get the court to adopt a rigged methodology to calculate the final number of valid signatures that would sneak their disqualified measure onto the ballot. Their dubious formula cherry picked data that boosted their numbers, even including signatures that were disqualified by the counties in the random sample. None of their formula was rooted in statute or historical precedent and was a Hail-Mary attempt to resuscitate thousands of signatures that simply should not have counted. Thankfully, after additional review by the courts, their rigged formula was discarded, and the correct statutory calculation was used to determine that they lacked the minimum number of signatures to qualify for the ballot. Arizona voters, the rule of law, and basic math were victorious today.”
“The liberal ballot initiative deceptively titled, “Arizona’s For Free and Fair Elections” suffered a fatal blow today in the Arizona Supreme Court. It affirmed the trial court’s earlier decision to disqualify the initiative for failing to secure the minimum number of signatures required by law to qualify for the November ballot,” said Arizona State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita.
“Do not be fooled by the name, this initiative had nothing to do with “free and fair elections” and everything to do with returning to an election system the Democrats can manipulate since they cannot get enough votes behind their candidates or their woke, build back broke, open border, closed economy and anti-parent policies,” continued Ugenti-Rita. “This is a massive victory for election integrity and means the Democrats’ ploy to gut our election system has been stopped for now.”
Arizona State Sen. Raquel Terán, who serves as the chair of the Arizona Democratic Party, expressed her disappointment in the Court’s ruling in a tweet:
I’m FURIOUS the @AZFairElections got knocked off the ballot by AZ Supreme Court. I feel the pain of the organizers & partners who poured their hearts, soul,& resources daring to dream to return power to the hands of Arizonans. I know this won’t stop them but today send them love. pic.twitter.com/Wn1RB53tRZ
— Raquel Terán #BlackLivesMatter (@RaquelTeran) August 27, 2022
The chair of the Center for Election Integrity (CEI) of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Ambassador Ken Blackwell, applauded the Court’s ruling, calling it a “win for every legal vote and every legal voter.”
“The so-called Free and Fair Elections Act in reality had nothing to do with fair elections and everything to do with making it easy to cheat,” stated Blackwell. “It would have overturned the election integrity work of the Arizona Legislature, taken the guardrails off protecting the election system from fraud, taxed small businesses to pay for political campaigns, eliminated voter ID, and opened the system up to non-citizens being able to vote.”
AFPI is working in Arizona and around the country, through the Legislatures and through the courts “to make it easy to vote but hard to cheat in every election.”