Arizona Republicans keep churning out new election legislation targeting voting access - 141 so far

[Demovictory9]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/03/arizona-republicans-target-voting-access/

The election-related bills kept coming, most of them aimed squarely at restricting voting access. The files clogged the desk of Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly — 141 by early last week, she said, or almost 10 percent of all bills filed in the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature so far this year

---------------

Until 2018, the number of legislative proposals about elections and voting hovered around 50 per year, Cázares-Kelly, a Democrat, told me. By 2021, Arizona ranked third in the country for the number of restrictive bills introduced, an increase no doubt fueled by former president Donald Trump’s dishonest diatribes about a stolen election and his resounding loss in a state no Democratic presidential nominee had won since Bill Clinton in 1996.

-------

Arizona hasn’t yet shed its reputation as a place of exclusion and racism, even if in its largest cities, Phoenix and Tucson, White people are now in the minority. There’s a systematic attempt to keep communities of color — the new majority — as outsiders through policies that seek to undermine their chances of reaching higher and occupying a space in society that measures up to their numbers.

---------

S.B. 1571 would permit the use of ballot drop boxes, but only if they are outfitted with 24-hour photo or video cameras, an onerous requirement in the remote rural and tribal lands of Arizona, where Internet connectivity is practically nonexistent and exactly where these boxes are needed most.