The Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) filed a lawsuit against Arizona’s Secretary of State Adrian Fontes this week. The suit was filed in Yavapai County Superior Court. Arizona law states that mail-in ballot drop boxes must be located inside of polling places, and only accessible when they are under the direct supervision of staff.
The current Election Procedures Manual (EPM), which was adopted in 2019 when former Secretary of State Katie Hobbs was in office, states that drop boxes can be situated in any random dark alley away from prying eyes or security cameras. Fontes is trying to use the same out-of-date, and clearly illegal, rule for the 2024 election.
The draft EPM for 2024 still says that ballot drop boxes and be placed just wherever. No biggie. It’s not like that would be tempting for anyone who wants to cheat in an election by stuffing an unmanned ballot box with stacks and stacks of fake ballots.
“With no basis in statute, and supported by nothing more than executive fiat, the Secretary has authorized election officials throughout the state to employ unstaffed drop-boxes as another manner by which voters may cast their votes early,” said AFEC in a press release.
The lawsuit notes that Fontes’ draft version of next year’s EPM contains more than 1,000 citations of state law when talking about everything but drop boxes. But in the section of the manual that says you can put drop boxes in any old place, there are zero citations of state law. AFEC says this is a deliberate omission.
Fontes knows that putting out unstaffed drop boxes is in direct violation of state law, so his office simply isn’t citing the law at all.
“The EPM’s omission of citations to Arizona’s statutes was surely not an oversight. When a statute supports an EPM regulation, the EPM cites it,” says AFEC. “Apparently, though, the EPM’s authors could find no enabling statute supporting unstaffed drop-boxes.”
Since the Secretary of State’s office isn’t following the law by having drop boxes set up in election offices and monitored by human eyes, counties have been setting them up in churches, elementary schools, restaurants, humane societies, libraries, fire departments, and community centers. The EPM also doesn’t state how many drop boxes counties are allowed to have, and it doesn’t put any geographic restrictions on them. The deliberate lack of oversight over Arizona’s drop boxes is downright absurd if you follow the rules being set by the Secretary of State’s office.
AFEC argues, we believe correctly, that an unstaffed drop box breaks the chain of custody on every ballot that is deposited in it. State law designates only two staffed locations where drop boxes are allowed to be placed: Polling places, and in an election official’s office, which is usually the county recorder’s office.
Suppose there is an unstaffed drop box in a particular county of Arizona where the Democrats know a lot of Republican voters live. So, the Democrats go break into that drop box, steal all of the ballots out of it, and dump them in a lake. Guess what? There’s no federal crime that a person can be charged with for doing that, nor is there a specific law enforcement agency tasked with investigating crimes related to tampering with a drop box.
We have federal laws that protect mailboxes from those types of crimes, but not ballot drop boxes, which have only been around since approximately, oh, when was it? Oh, right, the 2020 election that was stolen from Donald Trump and the American people.
Drop boxes in Arizona aren’t even required to have LOCKS on them.
Although we only want to give them a small amount of credit, the Arizona legislature did pass a law to require that drop boxes only be located in a select number of staffed locations. It was former fake “Republican” Attorney General Mark Brnovich who was too busy making stupid num-chuk videos on YouTube to actually enforce the law when Katie Hobbs broke it in 2020 and again in 2022.
If AFEC succeeds in this lawsuit—and it sounds like they have a good chance of doing so—that will be one less mechanism of cheating at the disposal of the Democrat Party in 2024. We wish them luck.
Did I not read within this article that there is a law that is being broken with ballot boxes being placed outside of legal places? WTH , why is this being allowed and where is the JUDICIAL Law GROUPS not contesting this with COURT ACTION?
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Thus crookedness us what got the current President in offices this way if voting needs to be STIOPED NOW!!!
Thus crookedness us what got the current President in offices this way if voting needs to be STOPPED NOW!!!
Gee, if it wasn’t for corruption the demoncraks would have NO ethics.
Voter ID and Vote in Person Only. Be honest this is a Christian Nation. Every American Vote.
If these unsupervised Ballot Drop Boxes are allowed to be installed ,then there should be transparency to the public of the tally sheets from ALL COUNTIES AND POLLING LOCATIONS. I also believe ALL COUNTIES VOTER REGISTERS SHOULD BE VIEWED AND UPDATED.
The democrat disease this virus the worse virus to hit the USA in history of America. This virus democrat disease has to be stopped it is killing America worse than covit or black plague. We have to get this deadly disease under control our lose our homeland for good. Hope and pray we can vote it out in 2024 we have a small chance but every true american citizen needs to get out and vote this horrible disease out its killing everything in its path and we much try get rid of it. If we dont get it out in 2024 and it gets to stay in office our children will have know homeland fit to live in. We must try hard to get this deadly virus out of our country .please we have a small chance and must try hard to win over it. We need a new president in office anyone except a democrat !!!!. No democrats in any office the virus must be gotten rid of.