‘Democracy is under siege’: Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs

June 18, 2021

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) achieved national prominence after November’s election as her state moved from being an electoral college battleground to a front in the legal and political conflicts over counting ballots. Those fights are still raging. She warned in an op-ed for The Post this week that “democracy is under siege in Arizona.”

Joe Biden beat then-President Donald Trump there by 10,457 votes, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state since Bill Clinton. Responding to pressure from Trump, despite no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities, Arizona’s state Senate used a legislative subpoena to seize the ballots and voting machines from Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. Trump has embraced the ongoing, widely criticized partisan audit that has followed. Hobbs won a court order to send impartial observers into the audit and has been warning that a forthcoming report, expected sometime this summer, will be used as a pretext to sow doubt about the integrity of the election system.

Simultaneously, the Republican legislature has moved to pass laws that could make it harder to vote. Republicans recently got rid of the state’s Permanent Early Voter List, which Hobbs warns could prevent more than 100,000 Arizonans from receiving ballots in the next election. Republicans in Arizona’s legislature have struck back at Hobbs for her opposition to their recount by passing a measure to strip her ability to defend election-related lawsuits. They gave that power instead to the state’s attorney general, who is — not coincidentally — a Republican.

Hobbs, who is running for governor, says what’s happening in her state demands federal intervention. To enshrine in national law various voter protections, she wants the Senate to pass the For the People Act, even if it requires getting rid of the filibuster. In her op-ed, she calls out Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) for opposing the bill and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) for supporting the bill but opposing changes to the filibuster. As long as the filibuster remains in its present form, the legislation appears doomed.

Hobbs is optimistic that there’s room for compromise and says she would be okay with scaling back certain campaign-finance provisions to keep the bill focused on voting rights. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to bring the legislation to the floor for an initial vote next week, even though he knows it won’t get the 60 votes necessary to advance.

Source: WP