...to pass something that will just make things worse instead or fixing things.
At the state legislature, the Senate's Elections Committee and the House's Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee held a joint meeting to consider two Republican-proposed bills at 9 a.m.*
* = they have a verrryyyyy flexible concept of time at the legislature
They were meeting to consider SB1733 (introduced by Sen. Wendy Rogers) and HB2785 (Rep. Alexander Kolodin), identical bills that are supposed to address the state's elections calendar, which threatens to disenfranchise Arizona voters,
I spent 2 1/2+ hours watching it online. I recommend doing so, unless you have something better to do. Like taking out the trash. Or washing your hair. Or amputating one of your legs.
Primary takeaway: Both bills passed committee on party-line votes.
Other takes on the meeting:
- The lege does have a rather flexible concept of time - the meeting was slated to start at 9 a.m. but wasn't gaveled in until 9:21 a.m..
Shortly after that, one of the chairs (Sen. Wendy Rogers) noted that the meeting was going to take an hour.
Rogers observed at 10:17 that her hour had ended 15 minutes before.
Rogers and the other chair, Rep. Jaqueline Parker, recessed the meeting at 10:50, for "five" minutes.
The meeting reconvened 11:03.
It ended at 11:39.
...Apparently, both Rogers and Parker believe that "committee chair" is another way of saying "absolute dictator".
They had a dissenter ejected from the hearing. He's ruffled tender legislative sensibilities before.
They tried to suppress dissent by limiting public testimony to four speakers.
...Rep Alexander Kolodin, sponsor of HB2785 and an attorney, like to hear himself talk. One of the things that he said that he wasn't involved with litigation related to signature verification in Yavapai County. That seemed to be a really specific denial, so I did a little research. Turns out, that was true in a lawyer's sort of way. Is there another case he's involved with? Yup, in Mohave County.
He (and others) stated that they've been working on this for months. So they sat on this until the situation became urgent and think that they can force their propaganda on the rest of the people of Arizona.
...There was a lot of lying and dissembling going on. Mostly by the Republican members. They all thought (and opined) that the extraneous signature verification clauses in the bill(s) were essential to changing election dates.
...Don't hire these folks to do your taxes. They're without ability to do basic math. They added two speakers and the Rep. Parker said that meant there were three in favor of the bill and three opposed.
I counted five in favor and one opposed. They could only get to three and three by counting the last two speakers as "opposed" - they wanted the bill amended to make the signature verification portion harsher.
...Sen. Sonny Borrelli may not be the brightest light in the nighttime sky. He tried to plant words in the mouth of the one speaker who was actually opposed to the measure(s), and when that speaker didn't go for it, Borrelli tried to do so again.
[Edited on 2/7 to add]:
...Certain members of the state legislature are still ticked off by the Red for Ed movement of a few years ago. At least, they used the bills to get their "petty and vindictive" on -
[/End edit]
Pics from the video feed -
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| House members showed up before Senate members. |
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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse confer before the meeting (Center of the pic, L-R) -
Sens Rogers and Bennett, and Reps Parker and Kolodin.
In honor of the upcoming Super Bowl, it might be appropriate to refer to them as the Fearsome Foursome.
But that would be overrating them.
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| Sen. Sundareshan making a point |
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| Sen. Hernandez making a point |
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| Rep. Terech making a point |
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| Rep. Kolodin with his mouth open. Not an unusual occurrence |
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| Quick! Some lobbyist needs to give Sen, Kavanagh a comb! |
