“With public confidence in our elections in peril, it’s clear our elections must be pristine and above reproach — and the sole purview of government,” Ducey announced in a signing letter. Ducey’s statement appears after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan provided $419 million to two nonprofit groups, including the Center for Election Innovation and Research, that assisted fund local and state election administration before the 2020 presidential election. The funds were crushed by conservatives and ended in lawsuits that claimed federal law prevents local governments from accepting private donations for such initiatives.
The couple said at the time of the announcement that “many counties and states are strapped financially and working to determine how to staff and fund operations that will allow for ballots to be cast and counted in a timely way."
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Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs applied $4.8 million from the Center for Election Innovation and Research for voting causes both before and after the 2020 election. Democrats in the state condemned the underfunding of election administration on Republicans, with one Democratic lawmaker maintaining that the state put itself in the position of accepting funds from Zuckerberg.
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“It’s easy to make a boogeyman ou[t] of billionaires. I don’t like them either. But we put ourselves in this situation,” state Sen. Juan Mendez, a Tempe Democrat, stated. “Our elections are so underfunded we’ve got counties out there asking for money to do voter outreach.” Her office stated the money was important in educating people about how to safely vote during a pandemic.
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Nine counties — Apache, Coconino, Graham, La Paz, Maricopa, Navajo, Pima, Pinal and Yuma — also received grants from the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Hobbs said in a statement that she was “deeply disappointed he has preferred to satisfy the conspiracy theorists within his own party instead of taking a stand.” Ducey pledged to partner with the Legislature to provide elections officials with adequate resources.
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The bill passed along party lines in both the Arizona Senate and House, and the governor signed it into law on Friday.
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“Gov. Doug Ducey stood up for all Arizonans by taking swift action and signing this historic election integrity law. HB 2569 is another in a series of strong measures Arizona lawmakers have taken to protect election integrity and keep the influence of private money out of Arizona’s election system operations. Arizonans deserve an election process free from outside influence and partisan funding — by banning corporate and private funding for election operations, this law will safeguard that system,” Heritage Action Executive Director Jessica Anderson said.
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