Response from decertified Clean Elections candidate

Earlier this week, I posted about a Republican candidate for state senate in LD7, Robert Green. He was decertified as a Clean Elections candidate and fined due to some rules violations.

Green contacted me later in the week and asked for an opportunity to explain his position on what happened.

As I firmly believe in fairness, I agreed to put publish a brief statement written by Mr. Green.

I take no position on the correctness CCEC's decision or Mr. Green's response, other than to say he was very civil when we spoke and deserves a chance to have his take on the matter heard.

From an email -

In March, I turned in 265 Clean Election Qualifying forms. Of those, approximately 75 were gathered by employees that I hired from Craigslist to do temp work for my business. Since they were well paid, 3 of them agreed to volunteer to help get signatures. The initial report back from the County Recorder said 136 signatures were invalid. After a visual inspection of each one, I filed 2 appeals to have the signatures reviewed. Before the 2nd appeal, I was informed that CCEC was doing an investigation and felt that all 136 were invalid. Due to my efforts, about half of those have since been ruled valid. Many of the remaining were ruled to be invalid, all of those gathered by 2 of the volunteers. The forms were turned in to me without a signature from the solicitor; my error in judgment is that after verifying the voter registration, I signed the forms and turned them in, making me responsible.

Prior to being informed of an investigation, I turned in another 160 CCEC forms of which over 140 were valid, putting my final total of valid forms to be approximately 340, well over the 220 minimum requirement.

While I do respect the CCEC decision on decertification, I do feel it was excessive and punitive; I am responsible for the volunteers and signing forms that I should not have, however, there is no way for a candidate to check signatures prior to submission to the Secretary of State - we can only check if voter registration and address is valid. I did not falsify any information or break any CCEC rules.

I will file an appeal, however, given the late date, it is unlikely that a decision in my favor would come in time to help my campaign. I will continue to campaign with a very limited budget and hope that voters will consider my experience, knowledge, and desire to help Arizona recover when it is time to vote in the primaries.

Bob Green

Green is still running for Republican nomination for the state senate in a four-way race against Nancy Barto, Ray Barnes, and Brad Buch.

I have emailed the Citizens Clean Elections Commission to offer them the opportunity to put forth a statement on this. I don't expect them to do so, but will publish their response if they send one.

Later...