Townsend Chooses Arizona Fights Over Congressional Campaign

Arizona State Senator Kelly Townsend has decided to forego her campaign for Congress to focus on the battles going on at the State Capitol.

Recently, Townsend was in the news for trying to hold State Senator Wendy Rogers accountable for her support of anti-Semitism and defense of a group that cheered the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, and she continues to lead the effort to pass a series of election integrity reforms she believes are important to securing the 2022 and 2024 elections.

https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2022/03/04/townsend-chooses-arizona-fights-over-congressional-campaign/

These are the only bills that have passed so far.

The last one on the list HB2839 was introduced, passed and signed by the governor all in 1 day but they can't get any other bills passed.

They really need to stop playing games and get election integrity, health freedom and parental rights bills passed NOW!

🚨 PC ELECTIONS ARE CRITICAL 🚨

I spent most of the day yesterday working on how to resolve the issue with HB2893 and the insane provision to strip PCs of their elected status and totally circumvent the PC elections.

This provision was snuck into the bill unbeknownst to most members. We were told that the Party supported the bill, which has proven to be false and that this was intended to fix the utter mess Katie Hobbs has made of our election procedures for 2022.

More concerning, this provision was seemingly intentionally hidden in the legislation. New provisions are supposed to be in BLUE CAPITAL LETTERS. Deletions are supposed to be in red. Current law is supposed to be in black normal case letters, yet this NEW provision was hidden in black normal case. This is standard practice for all legislation! Was this change in standard practice done intentionally in order to hide the provision from those of us that actually read the bills?

I am working on a full repeal of the language in HB2893 relating to PCs.

I am also working to get to the bottom of where this language came from. I have heard rumors that it was a done at the request of AACO, but have not been able to confirm for sure if that is the genesis of it.

I stand with the PCs!
We must have PC elections in 2022!

None of them asked a single question!

In response to some serious misunderstanding on a different Telegram channel, I am posting here as well, just in case.


No actually I made the decision before they could. I was hours away from the endorsement but I declined it because speaking out against Wendy Rogers would have been detrimental anyway. It was a hard decision but when I asked Wendy Rogers to just explain that she does not ascribe to the anti-Jewish hate and that she didn’t mean to post a picture of a rhinoceros that she killed with a Jewish star on it, she refused. All she had to do was say that she supports his first amendment rights but she doesn’t agree with what he is saying. She instead posted the meme of her shooting the Jewish rhino. I am so very sorry to all of you, I thought Wendy was our strongest chance and I am devastated. I don’t like having to do this but I also cannot stay silent in order to benefit myself and get the endorsement. I did not vote to censure her because I wasn’t there that day. The following day I asked her to put into the journal that she was speaking of First Amendment rights and that she didn’t align herself with his rhetoric and she refused. I was left without any choice. If that still upsets you then I am sorry but I am not going to make a different choice when in the face of such serious hate.

UPDATE: No legislators asked any questions on this bill [HB2839].

(Credit to @ ThatParentP4P for video)

- Tyler Bowyer

Accurate.

#HB2839

At the 28 minute mark Steve Bannon talks about the AZ Legislature "Banning Precinct Committeemen project via emergency bill"
https://rumble.com/vwjgzl-episode-1686-putin-says-the-west-has-declared-on-russia-truckers-rally-outs.html

While the legislature promises to fix the #PCKILLBILL, cancellation notices for PC appointments to file their nomination forms and signatures are going out en mass:

Because I am being accused of being against the 1st Amendment, I want to post this so you can see for yourself my stance on this very unfortunate situation. Nowhere in my speech did I stifle anyone’s speech. If you disagree, please tell me where I did.

https://rumble.com/vwjsau-sen.-kelly-townsend-discusses-censure-of-sen.-wendy-rogers.html

https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2022/02/18/speaker-bowers-to-run-for-arizona-senate-again-termed-out-of-house/ he's running for senate
he's termed out of house

“Bowers is the ultimate insider’s insider,” said one prominent lobbyist, who added that “Bowers will have more money than God for his race, which he may need because his voting record is actually pretty terrible if you’re in a conservative Republican primary.”

Email From Karen Fann Re HB2839

From: Karen Fann <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, Mar 5, 2022 at 6:50 AM
Subject: Re: HB2839 What Does this Mean or Accomplish?

That is not correct. Please note the “not withstanding “ language

The emergency language in HB2839 was necessary for several reasons, but primarily due to the chain reaction stemming from the delay in Census data. In normal years, the changes to district boundaries following redistricting are required to be certified or adopted no later than December 1 of the year prior to the general election. However, as you know, the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission did not certify the new congressional and legislative district boundaries until January 24, 2022. Immediately, counties started to work with their GIS teams to import the new boundaries and make any changes to election precincts required by the new CD/LD boundaries. Testing is ongoing to ensure the affected voters are assigned to the correct election precinct for the 2022 election cycle.

By law (A.R.S. § 16-411(A)), election precinct boundaries cannot cross congressional, legislative, supervisorial or community college district boundaries. This necessitated counties, mostly medium-large counties that have more than one congressional and/or legislative district within county boundaries, to create additional election precincts where the new CD/LD boundaries crossed through an existing election precinct, even if this meant a precinct with no voters had to be created. The new election precincts cannot “go live” in the voter information database until at least mid-March due to several counties conducting March 8th jurisdictional elections; we cannot make changes to voters’ election precincts in the midst of an active election.

Which leads us to the complication with precinct committeemen elections. Precinct committeemen (PC) positions are determined by A.R.S. § 16-821(A), which allows for one PC position for each election precinct plus one additional position within that precinct for every 125 registered voters in that precinct (for each recognized political party). The counties did not have the authority to change the number of positions to reflect the new election precincts until we included the language in HB2839 (page 3, A.R.S. § 16-322(D)) to allow for consideration of the “number of qualified signers in the … elective precinct on the effective date of the new district or precinct.” This language also addresses the concerns for new Justice of the Peace precincts created after January 2 of the year of a general election.

Where maintaining the existing election process for PCs would have been detrimental to the parties and their candidates for PC offices is that counties would have provided a new list of number of PC offices per election precinct, including new election precincts, and signature requirements halfway through the candidate filing period. Counties believed this was unfair to the parties and candidates and we sought a solution to ensure communities in new election precincts would have accurate party representation.

Maricopa County alone is making 387 election precinct changes due to new CD/LD boundaries, including 104 new election precincts, 81 of which contain voters. This means, at minimum, the political parties recognized in Maricopa County will receive approximately 81 new PC office positions in 2022 due to the new election precincts.

[continued 1/2]