Several grassroots organizations are organizing an educational seminar titled “Protect the Vote” in Arizona on Monday, with events in Scottsdale and Tucson. Organized by America First Policy Institute (AFPI), the seminar includes Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) Chair Gina Swoboda, who heads the Voter Reference Foundation, and speakers from the Honest Elections Project, Heritage Action for America, Save Our States Action, and American Constitutional Rights Union Action.
“The primary objective of these grassroots seminar events is to educate the public on the background and mechanics of the jungle primary and ranked choice voting system, including an in-depth discussion on the many examples of where it’s been implemented and proven unsuccessful,” AFPI Policy Director Jordan Kittleson told The Arizona Sun Times. “We will also be providing attendees with a comprehensive poll worker and poll watcher training presentation that will equip them with the readiness resources and tools needed to better ensure citizen engagement at polling locations in November.”
One of the 10 pillars of AFPI is “Make it Easy to Vote and Hard to Cheat.” AFPI says, “To address concerns about election integrity in the U.S., we must require all voters to present voter identification and clean up voter rolls. Our government must also require all ballots to be returned to election officials by Election Day. Additionally, we must end weak ballot harvesting laws that do not protect the chain of custody for ballots. At the same time, we must ensure that Zuckerbucks are not allowed to be part of our electoral system.”
Arizona is one of 28 states that have banned third-party funding of elections, dubbed “Zuckerbucks” after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg’s unprecedented distribution of more than a half-billion dollars to key swing states in 2020 through non-profit organizations like the Center for Election Innovation and Research, Center for Technology and Civic Life, and others.
A proposition that will adopt ranked choice voting is on the ballot this fall in Arizona. The Make Elections Fair Act (MEFA) would establish ranked choice voting for the general election, open primaries, end public funding in partisan primaries, bind future legislatures’ ability to legislate on the number of candidates permitted on the ballot for a given race and alter Arizona’s separation of powers by expressly directing lawmaking authority to the Arizona Secretary of State. The Arizona Free Enterprise Club filed a lawsuit against the ballot proposition last month, alleging that combining that many legal changes into one proposition violates the Arizona Constitution.
Ranked choice voting would place all candidates for an office on the primary ballot — Republicans, Democrats, independents, etc. — with voters ranking them in order of preference—the five candidates who receive the most votes advance to the general election.
Kittleson told The Sun Times, “Ranked Choice Voting is a confusing, chaotic, disenfranchising system where the person with the most votes doesn’t always win, which is essentially un-American to its core. The system scam manufactures a majority vote and throws one person, one vote, counted one time totally out the window.”
A third part of the seminar will address the need to require proof of citizenship in order to vote. While Arizona requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in state and local races, the courts have sided with aggressive progressive groups demanding that voters in federal races be provided a federal-only ballot if they fail to provide proof of citizenship.
America First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County earlier this year for failing to clean up its voter rolls to remove noncitizens. The complaint said 35,273 registered voters in Arizona had failed to provide proof of citizenship and were registered as federal-only voters as of April 2024, a number that continues to increase, according to a report from Maricopa County. The complaint cited a July 2024 survey of likely voters in Arizona and five other states, which found that over 1 percent said they are not U.S. citizens.
AFL stated that margins have been less than 1 percent in recent Arizona races. Joe Biden won the 2020 election over Donald Trump by 10,457 votes. Analysis by The Washington Times found that illegal immigrants are three times more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, and due to increasing numbers coming illegally across the border under the Biden administration, they are expected to increase their votes for Democrats this fall.
Under Swoboda’s leadership, the AZGOP has become involved in election integrity-related litigation. In April, it joined two other state Republican parties in filing an amicus curiae brief in Kari Lake and Mark Finchem’s lawsuit to stop the use of voting machine tabulators.
The AZGOP, under previous chair Kelli Ward, also championed election integrity, suing Arizona officials immediately after the 2020 election for conducting a post-election audit that the AZGOP contended did not comply with the law.
The Tucson seminar begins at 9:30 a.m. Monday at The Eddy Hotel. RSVP here, includes free breakfast. The Scottsdale event begins at 5:30 p.m. on Monday at Venue8600. RSVP here, seating is limited.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on X / Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Poll Worker” by Owen Yancher. CC BY-SA 4.0.
