Katie Hobbs gives opinion on voter bills

Republican lawmakers in the state legislature have introduced a number of bills targeting the state’s election process and ballot procedures. Monday, we spoke to Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to get her thoughts on these legislative efforts.

To sum up her overall thoughts Hobbs said, “We just had an election in 2020 that was marked with record voter participation and we reall should be celebrating the level of engagement from voters especially in the face of not only a global pandemic but widespread misinformation about the processes leading into the election and we should really be celebrating that. instead what we’re seeing is a host of legislation being proposed based on this misinformation basically using that as excuses to really roll back the ability for voters to participate and that is extremely concerning.”

As the conversation with Secretary Hobbs continued she gave her opinion on house bill 2720, stating, “That bill is very concerning because the first portion that you mentioned really allows the legislature under any circumstances to override the will of the voters when it comes to the presidential election. the legislature already has a role in that process of choosing how we choose electors and they’ve done that and that was the process followed in 2020. But this would allow them to then come in and change the rules of the game in the middle of the game and you can’t do that. Most concerningly allowing them to change the rules in a way that just dismisses the will of the voters, at this point why would we even have a presidential election just send it right to the legislature and let them choose Arizona’s winer. That’s not how it works.

Hobbs is clearly against the bills, but it will be up to the entirety of the state legislator to make the decisions.