PHOENIX (AP) — Voting rights advocates on Tuesday announced plans for a sweeping Arizona ballot initiative they say would “protect the freedom to vote” from Republican lawmakers pushing to remake voting laws based on false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
The wide-ranging initiative would roll back recent changes approved by Republican lawmakers to voting and initiative laws. It would also automatically update voter rolls using driver's license records and eliminate registration deadlines, allowing people to register and vote on the same day.
“This is a big moment for our democracy, and it demands a big response,” Joel Edman, co-director of the Arizona Democracy Resource Center, one of the progressive groups leading the initiative, told reporters in virtual news conference.
The proposal comes with Arizona at the center of the threat to faith in democracy.
Dozens of election bills have been introduced this year, including some aiming to significantly curtail early voting and mail balloting. State Senate Republicans oversaw a partisan review of the 2020 election conducted by supporters of former President Donald Trump who made a wide variety of false or misleading claims suggesting there were problems with the election.
President Joe Biden won Arizona with the narrowest margin of any state in 2020, becoming just the second Democrat to win here since Harry Truman in 1948. The state is likely to be a battleground for control of the U.S. Senate this year and for the...
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