Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

As the iconic voting rights hero Rep. John Lewis once said, “The right to vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent tool or instrument in a democratic society.” As such, ballots should NEVER EVER be trifled with by anyone, at any time, under any circumstances.

To my friends and neighbors in rural communities, I would like to draw your attention to an action by the federal government that has communities like ours in its crosshairs. Federal regulators are hoping that rural communities will fail to notice what they are doing. In Arizona this list includes Flagstaff, Prescott, and Sierra Vista.

There is indeed a positive societal impact from the expansion of earned release credits, but the sizeable economic benefits cannot be ignored.

When it comes to health care, most Americans want essentially the same thing – lower costs, better quality, and improved access for those who need it most. While it suffered from some bumps in the road during its implementation and rollout, the Affordable Care Act has done a decent job at expanding coverage to an additional 20 million Americans who did not previously have access to care while protecting patients with pre-existing conditions.

Arizona’s children are going back to school, and our elected officials face enormous decisions on how to weigh containing a deadly pandemic against the needs of families. We are losing lives and livelihoods every day, and yet somehow our Legislature cannot be bothered to focus on Covid relief when school-mandated prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance make such an ideal wedge in the culture wars.

Please take the time to give these bills some thought, develop your own opinions and contact your legislator with your position. In other words, we encourage you to participate in the political process and to help improve the integrity of our elections.

How many Arizonans like the idea of one billionaire family manipulating the way Arizona county election offices operate? That’s an unpopular idea for people across the political spectrum, especially when the billionaire is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose controversial actions make him distrusted by Left and Right.

Our civic and political leaders need to stop reaching for these hyper-emotionalized and exaggerated examples that occur in less than one-tenth of 1% of all vacation rental properties. They are not the norm, but the rare exception. Those of us in the business want them gone too, and are working hard to root them out each and every day.

In Arizona and across the nation Republican politicians are engaging in a power grab – they are actively working to suppress the vote and discriminating against minority communities to stop regular people from having a say. Now is the moment to make the changes needed to restore our democracy.

Holding people in prison past the date they can safely be released wastes taxpayer dollars and reduces public safety. When people decide to turn their lives around in prison, we should encourage that behavior – and make sure our prison system makes redemption achievable.