The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
A little-noticed casualty of the pandemic has been the right to petition for special elections to recall elected and appointed officials. A recall election (also called a recall referendum, recall petition or representative recall) is a procedure by which voters can remove an elected official from office through a direct vote before that official’s term has ended.
In the middle of a life-threatening pandemic, Arizonans have all but lost that right. To ensure the integrity of the process, the authors of Arizona’s Constitution imposed a requirement that signatures be collected “in the presence” of petition circulators. That integrity can be protected online by using the digital signature technology incorporated in Arizona’s E-Qual system. E-Qual is used by candidates for public office to collect signatures for online nominating petitions. However, so far the courts have refused to allow it to be used for citizen initiatives and, presumably, for recall referendums.
A century ago, when legislators were drafting Arizona’s constitution, they could not have foreseen the development of an internet that could be used to circulate recall petitions, nor the technology that could be used to verify their digital signatures.
Nor could they have foreseen pandemic conditions that would prevent Arizonans from exercising their right to recall elected and appointed officials.
Continued insistence on following the letter of laws drafted 110 years ago will bring more COVID-19 deaths and disabling illnesses if those laws are not brought up to date.
Governor Doug Ducey’s pandemic policies have failed to achieve the goals he and his advisors set for them — protecting the viability of the state’s medical system and its economy. They have abjectly failed to protect the lives and health of tens of thousands of Arizonans. It is past time for him to go.
Ducey’s failure to control the pandemic provides a compelling example of the need to be able to recall incompetent or self-serving politicians. Even before COVID-19, that process was not quick or easy. After Ducey’s failed policies, it has become all but impossible.
The chairman of Accountable Arizona, Adam Halleck, explained the problems: “ . . . People were fearful about risking infection to go out to the places where petitions were available for signing,” he said.
And Halleck said more aggressive approaches to get names on petitions made no sense. “With COVID-19 completely out of control and the state seemingly doing nothing to stop it, we don’t feel comfortable having our volunteers going out anymore.”
When U.S. District Court Judge Dominic Lanza’s court ruled in April to deny Arizonans for Fair Elections access to E-Qual, he acknowledged the difficulty of collecting petition signatures under pandemic conditions. Nevertheless, the court ruled against AfFE expressing concerns about violating federalist principles and the plaintiff’s failure to “challenge Arizona’s constitutional provisions governing the initiative process.”
Allowing Arizonans access to E-Qual would send a powerful signal to state legislators as well as city and county officials they cannot ignore voters’ interests until a few months before the next election. The threat of recall may even motivate state legislators to initiate the much quicker expedient of impeaching Ducey.
There is no reason to believe the framers of Arizona’s constitution would object to using 21st century digital technology to protect the right to petition: The debate over whether to adopt it (the right to petition) was the “burning” and “most important” question raised during Arizona’s constitutional convention.
Commercial contracts signed with digital signatures are legally binding. If politicians can use E-QUAL to get into office, the public should have the right to use it to get them out.
