(Headline USA) In an Arizona election rife with suspicions of vote fraud that was administered by corrupt partisan activists at the state level and in its largest county, Maricopa, Democrats are now using their ill-gotten “victory” to further strip away any hope of enacting election integrity measures.
“Voters” who overwhelmingly cast their ballots by mail have rejected a measure that would have required them to add more information to the simple signature and date they now put on the back of the return envelope.
Proposition 309 also would have eliminated the ability of registered voters who do not have a state or federally-issued photo ID with them when they vote in-person to provide other proof of identity to cast a ballot.
New tallies from Maricopa County and several smaller counties released on Wednesday showed there was no chance for the measure to pass.
It had been too close to call in the eight days since polls closed on Nov. 8 and was the last of 10 measures on the ballot to be called by the Associated Press.
As with other races in the state that were inexplicably drawn out more than a week past election night, when most other states had their votes tabulated, the referendum’s defeat seems highly suspicious.
In Maricopa—where the ostensibly Republican election officials were found to be operating a Democrat-funded PAC that sought to undermine most of its GOP candidates—scanner glitches on Election Day impacted some 30% of polling stations in mostly red areas, undoubtedly suppressing the GOP vote.
Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was among those who had no intention of conceding as she gears up for a protracted legal battle. Her race, with a narrow margin of about 20,000 votes separating her from Democrat Katie Hobbs, still remained eligible for a possible automatic recount if she were to secure about 57% of the remaining ballots.
The election-integrity measure also was falling about 20,000 votes short of passing.
Democrats claimed that the proposed changes would lead to more mail-in ballots being rejected and people being turned away at the polls. They also pointed out that citizenship and other requirements for voting are already confirmed during the voter registration process.
However Hobbs, the current secretary of state, was caught sending ballots to ineligible voters, including those who did not have a valid driver’s license and voters who had moved out of state.
The more relaxed rules, exploited since the 2020 race under the pretense of pandemic safety, help facilitate widespread fraud and undermine confidence in the election outcome.
A post-mortem independent audit of Maricopa’s 2020 election found thousands of irregular ballots that could not be accounted for fully, with the number of questionable ballots being some 16 times the margin by which Democrat Joe Biden claimed the state.
If it had passed, Proposition 309 would have required voters to write their birthdates and add state-issued voter identification numbers, driver license or identification card numbers or a partial social security number to affidavits rather than just signing and dating them.
The back-of-envelope signature used by many counties also would be changed to require that they be placed into a second envelope.
In-person voting requirements also would change, eliminating the ability of voters who don’t have a state, tribal or federal government-issued photo ID on them to vote by presenting two alternate documents, such as a utility bill.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
