Arizona Secretary of State Allows Progressive Groups to Register Voters in Bulk Online, Then Scrubs the Groups’ Names from Its Website

Progressive organizations are aggressively registering new voters online using special online access implemented under Democratic election officials. In Arizona, the program was launched during COVID-19 in 2020 and is open to groups that intend to register more than 1,000 voters. There was very little news coverage of the program launch other than a press release, and the names of the progressive organizations are no longer listed on the Arizona Secretary of State’s website.

Last year, the list of the progressive groups granted access under then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs was prominently displayed on the site including Chicanos por La Causa, Mi Familia Vota, Equality Arizona, Inspire 2 Vote, One Arizona, Rock the Vote, and The Civics Center. Additionally, three other organizations that nominally sound nonpartisan but lean to the left were the Arizona Student’s Association, the Phoenix Indian Center, and the Arizona Center for Disability Law.

The Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian parties were listed, but Florence Smith, a precinct committeewoman in Legislative District 8, told Republican Briefs that the Republican Party was unaware of the service. No other right-leaning groups were listed, even though there are several known for registering voters in Arizona, such as Americans for Prosperity and Citizens for Free Enterprise.

The secretary of state’s office defended the lack of participation by conservative organizations by pointing out the sole inclusion of the Republican Party. Since the initial trial rollout of the 2022 program, there are likely many more organizations now approved for 2023.

IRS regulations prohibit targeting the registration of new voters by political party. However, a recent report from Restoration of America found that “nonprofits ran biased registration campaigns using data on where certain demographics live and how they vote.” The report looked at two sister nonprofits founded by a Democratic operative that did this outreach, the Voter Participation Center (VPC) and the Center for Voter Information (CVI). VPC boasted that it was “‘dedicated to increasing the share of unmarried women, people of color, Millennials, Gen Z, and other historically under-represented groups in the electorate’ — which happen to be the Democratic Party’s core constituencies.”…..

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Continue reading this article at The Arizona Sun-Times.