Citing the political upheavals the United States has been through in recent months, the Arizona attorney general said he hopes a voting rights case he is arguing before the Supreme Court on March 2 will help build momentum for enforcement measures. electoral integrity across the country.
“I think we should all agree on this point that we want to have confidence in our electoral system,” said Mark Brnovich, the Republican state attorney general, in an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, in which he shared his views. on the next oral argument in the superior court and measures of electoral integrity in general.
“We want orderly elections.”
Brnovich said he is “hopeful” about his prospects in the higher court, “but as someone who is actually married to a judge, I have long ago learned not to predict what a judge will do.”
Brnovich’s wife, Susan Brnovich, was appointed as a United States District Judge in Arizona by President Donald Trump in 2018. She previously served as a judge in Maricopa County.
More Americans should be actively involved in defending the nation’s founding and the institutions that grew out of it, he said.
There are a certain number of establishments that think “they just want to move on to get along… [but] the stakes are so high right now in this country that we need champions who understand what the framers of our Constitution established here in this country. “
There is a “need to understand traditional notions of federalism and to understand that the Constitution is about protecting rights, and that government is supposed to be limited and its powers defined.”
Vote gathering
The Supreme Court agreed on Oct. 2 to hear the case in question, which concerns efforts to combat Democratic plans that Republicans say undermine electoral integrity measures and open up the Grand Canyon state to vote gathering and voting outside the precinct.
Banning the unlimited collection of third-party ballots is a “common sense” way to protect the secret ballot and prevent undue influence, voter fraud, ballot tampering and voter intimidation, Brnovich said.
“We have seen in the past that people have used vote gathering to undermine the integrity of elections. We also know that none other than Jimmy Carter in 2005 recommended that common sense measures be implemented when it comes to collecting votes because absentee votes were one of the biggest sources of potential fraud, ”he said.
Brnovich was referring to the bipartisan Commission for Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, which concluded that “absentee ballots remain the main source of potential electoral fraud “And that” vote buying schemes are much more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail “.
“There was a time when this was a bipartisan issue, when all parties agreed that we want to make sure we have safe and secure elections, and now, for whatever reason, it has become a partisan issue,” he said. Brnovich. “It’s a shame because everyone should have confidence in our choices.
“I believe that as a civil servant there is no higher priority among public servants than maintaining the public integrity of our elections, so we want to make sure that people cannot vote multiple times, we want to protect ourselves against voter intimidation, we want to preserve the Voting secrecy, and I think that’s what our laws were designed for.
Voting rights cases
Oral arguments in Brnovich’s case before the Supreme Court come after an Arizona judge ruled in a separate case that state lawmakers have the right to access 2.1 million votes cast in the state’s most populous county and Related electronic materials to conduct an audit of the November 3 election results, as previously reported by The Epoch Times.
Although Arizona’s electoral votes were contested by the Trump campaign, and later by federal lawmakers when Congress met amid a rape of the Capitol by hundreds of protesters on January 6 and 7 to certify the results of the elections. Presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden received those votes. at the end.
In the court case, Maricopa County v. Fann, the GOP-controlled County Board of Supervisors asked the court to invalidate the legislative subpoenas. The Republican Party-controlled state Senate filed a counterclaim seeking enforcement of his subpoenas.
Judge Timothy J. Thomason of the Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County, wrote in a decision on February 25 that although the county believes the subpoenas are “the result of continued assertions by supporters of former President Trump that the election was ‘stolen’ and that this whole affair is a waste of time “, the court considers that the subpoenas are” legal and enforceable “. The Arizona Senate has “broad constitutional power to oversee elections … [and the] The Arizona legislature clearly has the power to investigate and examine electoral reform matters. «
The case that Arizona’s chief prosecutor upholds on March 2 is actually two cases that the Supreme Court consolidated. The first is Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (DNC); the second is the Arizona Republican Party against DNC.
The case is also one of the few legal challenges initiated by Republicans to the electoral procedures of the 2020 election cycle to survive the merits stage without being dismissed for lack of legitimation, discussion or for other reasons. The Supreme Court rejected a series of legal challenges on February 22 to the voting processes and results in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that remained of the cycle.
‘Discriminatory intent’
Arizona, like other states, has adopted rules to promote the order and integrity of its elections.
One provision is an “off-site policy,” which does not count provisional votes cast in person on election day outside the voter-designated precinct. Another is a “ballot collection law,” known as HB 2023, which allows only specific individuals such as family and household members, caregivers, mail carriers, and elections officials to handle another person’s entire advance ballot.
Most states require voters to vote in their own precincts, and about 20 states limit the collection of ballots by third parties, according to court documents.
A US district court upheld the Arizona provisions, which were challenged under the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution.
Section 2 of the VRA prevents state and local governments from imposing any “qualification or pre-voting requirement or standard, practice, or procedure … in a manner that results in a denial or limitation of the right of any United States citizen to vote on race or color count[.]»
A panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court, but later reversed at the en banc stage, going against the Trump administration’s recommendations.
Provisions regarding ballot collection and off-site voting were declared racially discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional by the appeals court.
“Arizona’s policy of completely discarding, rather than counting or partially counting, off-site ballots, and the HB 2023 penalty of collecting someone else’s ballot, has a discriminatory impact on Indigenous voters. , Hispanics and African Americans in Arizona, in violation of the VRA Section 2 ‘test of results’, ”Clinton-appointed Judge William A. Fletcher wrote for the court.
Fletcher added that HB 2023’s prohibition on collecting someone else’s ballot “was enacted with discriminatory intent, in violation of the ‘test of intent’ in Section 2 of the VRA and the Fifteenth Amendment.”
The Arizona laws in question are unfair because American Indian voters, other minorities, renters and poor people are disadvantaged because they have difficulty receiving and sending mail, Fletcher wrote.
“Minority voters depend on third-party ballot collection for many reasons,” he added, citing the testimony of a community organizer.
Accusations
Brnovich said he rejects those court findings, which are consistent with the legal arguments put forward by Democrats.
“The state of Arizona unreservedly supports the Voting Rights Act’s objectives on racial discrimination and voting,” he said.
“Our laws do not violate section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.”
But Republicans, Brnovich added, have long been falsely accused of racism.
“Accusing someone of racism is the last resort of an exhausted mind,” he said. “Unfortunately, today there are too many people who are intellectually lazy on the left and that’s what recurs.”
Brnovich harshly criticized the centerpiece of the Congressional Democrats’ agenda, HR 1, the proposed “People’s Act of 2021,” which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) says will “protect the The right to vote, will ensure the integrity of our elections, hold elected officials accountable and end the era of big, dark money and special interests in our politics.
Although the Constitution guarantees the states the authority to hold their own elections, the bill would “federalize and micromanage the state-run electoral process,” while eroding and eliminating security protocols and limiting freedom of political expression, according to a summary by the Heritage Foundation.
“I think the people in the states are best suited to decide what safeguards are needed,” Brnovich said.
“I don’t think it should depend on a few unelected judges or a group of people sitting in Congress to decide how we should conduct our elections freely and fairly in Arizona.”
“The reality is that it is a solution in search of a problem. And it would remind him of Nancy Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer that the federal government did not create states. The states created the federal government, and the Constitution was designed not only to have these checks and balances between the legislative, judicial and executive branches, but the states were designed to serve as a check on the federal government and did not create the federal government. it should be in the business of telling Arizona how we should conduct our elections. “
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