The Soros-funded proposition will not be allowed on the ballot.
QUICK FACTS:
- The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Friday that Proposition 210 will not be allowed on the November ballot because it lacked valid signatures.
- Proposition 210 is an initiative that would have potentially rolled back Arizona’s new election integrity law put in place after the 2020 presidential election.
- The proposition was funded by Democratic backer and Hungarian billionaire George Soros who has long been suspected of attempting undue influence over the American election system.
- Conservatives questioned the validity of signatures gathered by the group ‘Arizonans for Free and Fair Elections,’ which has strong monetary ties to Soros’ ‘Open Society Foundation.’
- Following the first round of litigation, the court found that not all of the 475,000 signatures submitted by the leftist groups were not valid, but the required 239,926 signatures were acceptable.
- Upon appeal, the state’s Supreme Court ruled that the ballot initiative did not have enough legal signatures to be included on November’s ballot.
STATEMENT FROM AN ELECTION INTEGRITY EXPERT:
- “The irony is rich, because signature verification is a standard election integrity requirement,” former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, chairman of the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), told reporters.
- “To have a ballot measure regarding elections not approved for the ballot because not enough legal voters supported it is precisely the sort of the thing that the Left aims to disallow,” Blackwell went on. “The fact that the ballot measure in question was designed to eradicate such election safeguards highlights the importance of those safeguards.”
- “This victory proves that the American people are more powerful than militant liberal activists like Soros, who is trying to fundamentally transform America,” he added. “The United States is a center-right nation, and while hundreds of millions of dark money dollars may distort democracy by astroturfing issues and gaslighting voters, the American people have enough sense and principle that such efforts can be defeated.”
BACKGROUND:
- Should the measure have made it to the ballot in November and been confirmed, it would have fully reinstated the Permanent Early Voter List and prohibited state legislators from reversing election results.
- The initiative would have also increased taxes on some businesses to provide more funding for “Clean Elections” candidate campaigns.
- The measure would also have permitted election-day voter registration, restricted campaign contributions, and loosened restrictions on where voters could cast ballots, as well as enacted other progressive-backed changes.
