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There’s no shortage of dangerous proposals floating around in state legislatures this year, but Republican state Rep. John Fillmore’s proposal in Arizona stood out for a reason.
At first blush, the lawmaker introduced the latest in a series of measures designed to make it more difficult for voters to participate in their own democracy. Fillmore’s bill, for example, intended to scrap most early and absentee voting. Voting Rights Lab, which tracks election laws, called it “one of the most comprehensive attacks on nonpartisan election administration and voter access that we have seen.”
But as we recently discussed, what made this proposal even more extraordinary is the system it intended to create after balloting has taken place: Under Fillmore’s model, Arizona’s legislature would have been required to hold a special session after the state’s votes have been tallied. At that point, lawmakers would’ve reviewed the results, examined election processes, and made a decision about whether to “accept or reject the election results.”
Or put another way, under this proposal, if the Republican-led legislature decided it disapproved of election results, lawmakers in this system would’ve had the unilateral power to overturn those results. As a report in The Hill put it, “Fillmore’s legislation ... is a sign that some Republicans have embraced the idea that legislators should have veto power over the will of the voters.”
The New York Times reported not only on the bill’s demise, but on the person responsible for killing it.
For decades, [Rusty] Bowers, the unassuming speaker of the Arizona House, has represented die-hard Republican beliefs, supporting the kinds of low-tax, limited-government policies that made the state’s Barry Goldwater a conservative icon. Bowers could have sat on the bill, letting it die a quiet death. Instead, he killed it through an aggressive legislative maneuver that left even veteran statehouse watchers in Arizona awe-struck at its audacity.
The article quoted a GOP consultant and longtime Bowers associate who said the state House Speaker “wanted to put the wooden cross right through the heart of this thing for all to see.”
Before anyone assumes that the top Republican in the Arizona state House is some kind of GOP moderate, let’s make this plain: He’s not. Bowers is a conservative Republican who supported Donald Trump.
But the state House Speaker has resisted his party’s conspiratorial radicalism, especially on electoral matters, and wasn’t prepared to endorse a plan that would allow legislators to override voters.
Looking ahead, the Times’ report added:
Fillmore, who insisted he was willing to bargain over any aspects of his bill, said he was “disappointed that members of my caucus do not have the testicular fortitude” to stand up to Bowers. But he hinted at moves afoot to remove the speaker.... “I’m an old-school person. I do not go calmly. I do not go quietly,” Fillmore warned. “I believe Republican voters are solidly in line with me.”
And it’s that big-picture takeaway that may be the most important element of this story. One rank-and-file GOP legislator introduced a radical election bill, which his party’s most powerful member went out of his way to kill.
Which of these two officials appears to have a brighter future in Republican politics?