State Rep. John Fillmore (R-Apache Junction) introduced one of the most sweeping election integrity bills this session, but it appears all but doomed due to a rare procedural maneuver deliberately made to stop it by House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R-Mesa). Bowers scheduled all 12 House committees to hear HB 2596, basically guaranteeing it will never reach the floor since some of the committees won’t bother to hear it.
“Canvass Queen” Liz Harris, so named after conducting an 11-month long independent grassroots audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, told The Arizona Sun Times she was extremely disappointed Bowers did this considering she is certain there was massive fraud. “From the canvassing I’ve done, this is what I realized needs to happen,” she said. She explained that other election integrity legislation is composed of single-issue bills which will only fix one area in the elections process, allowing fraud to move to other areas.
She went on, “It shouldn’t go to 12 committees — like education and transportation which have nothing to do with election integrity.” She said the problem is Bowers “does not believe that there were any election shenanigans in 2020.”
Harris spoke with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) recently, who explained this is how leadership in the Arizona Legislature kills bills it doesn’t like. When he was a state legislator, leadership did the same thing to his bill that would have required Mexico to pay for a border wall. Harris is so fed up with the situation she said she intends to run again for the Arizona Legislature. She ran previously in District 17, which is generally a Republican stronghold in the East Valley, but lost to Democrat Jennifer Pawlik.
Fillmore told The New York Times that Bowers’s tactics amounted to saying: “I am God. I control the rules. You will do what I say.” He hinted at getting Bowers removed as 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.”
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times
