Arizona Democrat Katie Hobbs on April 6 vetoed legislation that would codify “minimum standards” for the ballot signature verification process.
The bill, HB2322, had passed the state House and Senate with bipartisan support. As Arizona's Secretary of State, Hobbs had written the language in the legislation.
“Everyone should be aware, that Katie Hobbs wrote that language,” tweeted House Elections Committee Chair Rep. Jacqueline Parker. “It’s her language & her guidelines that she just vetoed… I wonder if she even knows that. We specifically put that language through as a test to see if she’s even reading these bills. What a clueless idiot!”
Hobbs "said that she’d ‘find common ground’ and work across party lines," said the bill's sponsor, state Rep. Alexander Kolodin.
"Right now, Arizona has no laws setting any signature verification rules for early ballots which help ensure that only lawful early voter’s vote," Kolodin added. "What ground could be more common making her own rules the law? Instead, her veto letter for HB2322, for which 16 Democratic House members voted, indicates that instead of legally enforceable rules, she would like ‘ongoing’ signature verification ‘guidance’ that is non-binding and can be changed on a whim by a single person. That is hardly democratic – or sober and responsible governance."
Hobbs insisted she issued the veto because signature verification guidelines are already in the Elections Procedure Manual (EPM).
Elections attorney Jen Wright, formerly with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, said in a tweet that Hobbs is mistaken: “The guidelines are not in the EPM. In fact @GeneralBrnovich sued @katiehobbs asking the court to require her to put the signature guidelines in the EPM so they would have the force & effect of law. She objected to including them in the EPM.”
Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s lawyers on April 5 argued that the court did not properly consider the evidentiary claim by Lake's team that 35,363 ballots were not accounted for in the final count in Maricopa County’s 2022 midterm election. In a court filing in Lake’s election integrity case, lead attorney Kurt Olsen reaffirmed that there “was no record for delivery” to Runbeck of the “Election Day early ballots.”
Olsen reasserts from earlier filings the “undisputed fact that 35,363 unaccounted[-]for ballots were added to the total of ballots at a third[-]party processing facility,” referencing Runbeck. The brief asks for reconsideration of the evidence and opposes the sanctions proposed by the pPlaintiffs to the Arizona Supreme Court on March 22. The court asked both parties to brief on the issue of sanctions, hence the recent filing by Lake, UncoverDC reported on April 10.
Hobbs vetoed two other election integrity bills on April 6, HB2415, and SB1074.
HB2415 would “decrease the number of consecutive election cycles in which a person may fail to vote an early ballot and remain on the AEVL from two election cycles to one election cycle.” SB1074 would “prohibit the use of electronic voting equipment as the primary method for tabulating votes in any city, town, county, state or federal election unless the outlined requirements are met and prescribes requirements relating to the source codes for electronic voting equipment.”
Hobbs has vetoed 37 bills this year. The record number of vetoes set in a single Legislative Session is 58, set in 2005 by Democrat Gov. Janet Napolitano.
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