Senate passes an(other) election conspiracy bill. We are saved

As we round into Month Four of what’s supposed to be a four-month legislative session, our leaders still haven’t gotten around to plugging a gaping loophole in water law to prevent rural Arizona from being sucked dry.

Help for struggling public school students, the ones who haven’t followed the parade of suburban kids that are snapping up those $7,000-plus taxpayer checks to pay for private schooling? Nope.

There was a moment when it appeared the Republican-run Legislature might address the homeless and affordable housing crisis that is leaving people with nowhere to turn but alas, that fizzled out.

Still, take heart, Arizona. Republican legislators just took a big, bold step to counter yet another election conspiracy that exists solely in their fevered imaginations.

HB 2308 addresses a Kari Lake conspiracy

House Bill 2308 would bar the secretary of state from overseeing elections in which he (or she) is on the ballot. Never mind that it’s the counties that actually run elections in Arizona.

It’s worth noting that this sudden glaring conflict of interest was never a concern when Republican secretaries of state were on the ballot, either running for reelection or for governor.

But then in those days our esteemed leaders dealt in facts, not fantasy.

Maybe it’s because Twitter wasn’t a thing then.

One of the many (many) theories of the conspiracy squad is that Kari Lake lost the governor's race last year not because she’s Kari Lake – and certainly not because she ran off RINOs and turned off independents.

No, Lake lost, as the conspiracy goes, because then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs somehow stole the election.

No proof that Hobbs threw the election

Of course, no one has never offered any actual evidence of how Hobbs pulled off this impressive feat.

But hey, it was all over Lake’s Twitter feed. And it was featured in Mark Finchem’s lawsuit challenging his loss to Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.

His lawsuit was so ridiculous that a Maricopa County judge – a Republican judge appointed by a Republican governor – actually sanctioned him last month for bringing a claim that was “groundless and not brought in good faith.”

So, naturally, the Senate on Tuesday approved HB 2308, addressing Finchem’s frivolous claim.

Latest Senate conspiracy theory: Involves elections and COVID-19

The bill, the brainchild of freshman Rep. Rachel Jones, R-Tucson, originally barred secretaries of state from performing any election-related duties while on the ballot.

Jones has said the bill is needed because the Cochise County Board of Supervisors was pressured by Hobbs to certify the 2022 election and threatened with jail by a Democratic election attorney.

“Two of their supervisors did not want to do that because there were enough questions left unanswered,” Jones told the Senate Education Committee last month.

The original bill got watered down

Never mind that ARS 16-642 says county supervisors “shall” certify the election within 20 days of the vote. Meaning they don’t have a choice.

Or that ARS 16-1010 says that “a person charged with performance of any duty under any law relating to elections who knowingly refuses to perform such duty … is guilty of a class 6 felony.” Meaning they could go to jail.

Still, everybody knows Hobbs must’ve cheated because, well, they just know.

And so we need a new law barring the secretary of state from performing his constitutional duties.

Except that the bill was watered down by the Senate on Tuesday, allowing the secretary of state to continue certifying elections and negating the reason for the bill in the first place. The SOS just would no longer certify machinery or write the election procedures that must be approved by the governor and attorney general.

Meanwhile, the governor and the attorney general? They can continue overseeing election procedures while on the ballot.

We're saved. Now can you fix real problems?

HB 2308 passed on Tuesday on a party-line vote.

“One of the most important things we do as elected officials is avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest,” Sen. Ken Bennett, R-Prescott said, in voting for the bill. “And we have rules that require us to admit conflicts of interest when they do exist.”

Conflicts that curiously didn’t exist when then-Secretary of State Bennett was running for governor. Or when Republican Secretary of State Michele Reagan was running for reelection.

Or in any of the other countless elections down through the decades in which secretaries of state were on the ballot.

Still, I get it. There’s now an appearance of a conflict of interest.

So yay. HB 2308 has passed. We are saved.

Now, how about doing something to address the appearance of a Legislature that seems to have no interest in fixing actual problems?

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Senate passes an(other) election conspiracy bill. We're saved