HB 2289 Sponsor AZ State Rep. John Filmore
Arizona House Bill 2289 to enact smaller precinct sizes, one-day in-person voting, and hand-counted paper ballots, passed through the Arizona House of Representatives in February and is now getting stonewalled in the Senate.
“It’s one of the best bills to come along. It’s all comprehensive on election integrity, and it’s the closest thing to what President Trump has asked for. There are two holdouts, Senator T.J. Shope and Senator Paul Boyer,” said Representative John Filmore, who sponsored the bill in the House.
Democrats have even told Rep. Filmore that his bill is good, although they’ll never vote for free and fair elections.
Previously, this same critical election integrity measure was murdered in the House by RINO Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who assigned HB 2596 to all twelve House committees in order to prevent its passage. After a long fight, HB2289 passed through the house with minor changes to the original bill.
This bill first passed through the House as a law that related to poll watchers and tabulation observation, but the Senate effectively rewrote the bill with a strike-everything amendment. This amendment made the following changes to Arizona’s elections.
Prohibits the use of electronic voting and tabulating devices, unless required to comply with accessibility requirements. Requires paper ballots to be used in all elections and counted by hand and returns to be made within 24 hours of polls closing. Restricts eligibility to vote an absentee ballot to only an elector that meets one of four specified criteria and repeals the Active Early Voting List (AEVL). Repeals authorization and requirements related to voting centers, emergency voting centers, on-site early voting, the duplication of ballots, and electronic vote adjudication.
The bill passed through the Senate Government Committee back in March, and it has not made any new progress since then.
Arizona voters are tired of waiting for this bill to pass.
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann “is holding the bill and has said she doesn’t want to release the bill because it doesn’t have the votes to pass and there are two Senators against it,” according to State Rep. Filmore, the bill’s primary sponsor.
Fann has maintained her position that the bill will fail because it does not have the votes necessary.
Filmore continued, “that’s kind of a false argument, and I think that’s what’s got everybody upset. I believe it was 31 or 41 bills that have actually failed in the Senate this year, so why did she put those up for a vote if they failed? Of those, I believe 14 were election-oriented.”
“Everybody’s overreacting on it. It is a good bill. It is a bill that everybody likes because it is very simplistic; one day, one vote in the precinct of registration, etc. Everybody wants the bill heard because it’s the only total election integrity bill that’s out there. A lot of people want to see it get across the finish line,” he added.
Patriots in Arizona have their full attention turned to this critical election integrity reform. Everybody wants to know who will fight for the people on this key issue.
Arizona State Senate Candidate Suzanne Sharer cited the “2000 Mules” who trafficked mass-mailed ballots to steal the 2020 election. Early voting needs to be cleaned up immediately.
U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters called out the Republican majority in the Senate, saying that not enough votes “is not an excuse.”
Trump-endorsed Gubernatorial candidate also called on the Arizona Senate to put the bill to a vote and to end no-excuse mail-in voting. The tweet has received more than 10,000 likes and is approaching 3,000 retweets.
The Arizona GOP called on Senate President Fann directly to hold a vote.
“The people want it,” said Representative Filmore.
Even RINO Senators T.J. Shope and Paul Boyer, who have vowed to vote against this bill, want it to receive a vote.
Filmore:The two people that are against it, which was Mr. Shope and Mr. Boyer, are basically in my opinion laughing at her. They were saying, “I’m a no on the vote,” but they favored putting it up on the board. They have both said to me that they will be a no vote but they have both said put the bill up on the board and hear it. So, my position is, let’s put the bill up and hear it, discuss it. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? That’s the way the Republicans are supposed to work.
On Friday, Fann told The Gateway Pundit, “The bill is unconstitutional. According to all of the attorneys, it violates the federal Voters’ Rights Act.”
The Senate Attorneys sent Karen Fann a May 3rd memo that stated,
It would essentially take Arizona election law back to the last century. The strike-everything amendment would eliminate the very items that the Court identified as making voting easy in this state and that reduced the impact that the examined statutory changes had on protected voters.
The strike-everything amendment would make voting in Arizona much more difficult than under the current law. Based on the factors identified in Brnovich, a strong case can be made that the strike-everything would be in violation of Section 2.
However, one day later, Karen Fann tweeted again, indicating that she still needs more votes to pass the bill in the Senate.
Representative Filmore told The Gateway Pundit,
I am in no way disparaging Karen Fann, but her position, up until several days ago was not the constitutionality… Karen has said consistently, every single day, ‘well, you don’t have the votes,’ which I had talked about when she first said ‘Hey we’ve got a problem with the bill,’ a couple of weeks ago.
So I went and saw the Senate Attorney and he pointed it out, and I said that’s no problem. That’s not even really a major factor in the bill as far as I’m concerned. That issue is being dealt with under an HCR, which has already gone out.
The bill has already been amended to fix these legal concerns.
Why does the Arizona Senate continue to hold this highly demanded election integrity measure from the Floor?
Contact Arizona State Senators to demand their vote for HB 2289.