Arizona Supreme Court Blames Hobbs For Preventing Validation Of Petition Circulators

While Katie Hobbs continues to ignore public demands that she debate Kari Lake, three new reasons she may want to avoid a face-to-face with her gubernatorial opponent came to light this past week with the issuance of three Decision Orders by the Arizona Supreme Court in election challenges to voter initiatives.

The Decision Orders were signed by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, and point the finger directly at Hobbs for failing in her role as Arizona Secretary of State to implement a process that allows petition circulators to comply with Arizona Revised Statute 19-118.

One of the three challenged initiatives involves the Voters’ Right Tto Know Act initiative, which if passed by voters in November would enact statutes to require public disclosure of the original sources of contributions of over $5,000 to fund campaign media spending in an election cycle.

One basis for the legal challenge to the petition signatures submitted to hope of getting the Voters’ Right To Know initiative on the 2022 General Election ballot involved the apparent violation of ARS 19-118 which requires petition circulators to submit a new or updated affidavit with their registration application to the Arizona Secretary of State for each initiative for which the circulator intends to collect petition signatures.

Brutinel noted the justices agreed with the challengers’ argument that noncompliance with the statute would typically result in the disqualification of any signatures collected by the non-compliant circulators.

However, Hobbs’ inaction in ensuring circulators could comply with the state law left the justices without any options, the chief justice wrote, adding that any lack of compliance in this case “does not invalidate the signatures gathered by these circulators on the record and circumstances before us.”

Those circumstances, according to the Decision Order, involve Hobbs and the online “circulator portal” she oversees which allows petition circulators to register with her office…..

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