Many people anxiously await Nov. 8 when the country decides who will lead it, but even sooner is a far more important date for Arizonans: Oct. 10. You see, as excited (or terrified) as you may be after that bruising debate this Monday, you won’t even have the chance to decide the future of the country and downtown Phoenix if you wanted to unless you register to vote within the next 11 days.
This year, each Arizonan will pick candidates for positions from the president of the United States down to his or her local school board. Most of these elections are decided by the party with the highest registration in a given district.
Across the state, Democrats trailed their rivals with only 1,019,050 voters compared to 1,185,023 Republicans. Accordingly, the last time Arizona voted for a Democrat for president was in 1996 for Bill Clinton, and Arizona has not had a Democrat in the Senate since Dennis DeConcini resigned to work for the Board of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation in 1995.
For Republicans, their dominance of almost every statewide office shouldn’t be taken for granted. Only in the run-up to this election have we seen Republicans retake the largest voting block in Arizona from the 1,164,373 registered independents, and Democrats are strategizing and hoping to split the state Senate with 15 of the 30 seats for the first time since 2000 and contest the historic Republican control.
And do not be mistaken, the results of this election will matter, though not necessarily because of who comes out on top. For downtown Phoenix, this past legislative session was particularly brutal with the passage of House Bill 2440, which shifted the burden of creating a business improvement district from opponents to the proponents of the district. Further, House Bill 2440 applied retroactively, which has been the basis for the ongoing litigation between the City of Phoenix and the State of Arizona over whether it was special legislation targeting the Roosevelt business improvement district.
However, House Bill 2440 wasn’t the only controversial bill for those in favor of local control. Senate Bill 1487 was a response to Governor Doug Ducey’s State of the State Address in which he stated he would “use every constitutional power of the Executive Branch and leverage every legislative relationship to protect small businesses and the working men and women they employ – up to and including changing the distribution of state – shared revenue.”
Senate Bill 1487 allows for any legislator to ask the Attorney General to investigate whether a local government has taken an official action that is against state law or the constitution. If the Attorney General finds a violation occurred, the local government must fix the violation in 30 days or its shared revenue funds will be withheld.
Due to the actions of the government elected when 47% of Arizonans voted in 2014, the city of Phoenix could lose a League of Arizona Cities and Towns estimated $493,761,725 (11 percent) of its carefully balanced $3,956,983,000 budget or be forced to revoke things such as its recently passed municipal ID cards if state Rep. Jay Lawrence’s complaints against the cards are substantiated.
And it’s not just municipal ID cards. The state of Arizona over the past two years has pre-empted efforts on local plastic bag bans and contemplated restrictions on local cities and towns mandating paid sick leave.
But none of this is set in stone and the first step to potentially changing things is registration. Without registration, you can’t vote, you won’t be taken seriously at local community meetings where some people have spent decades working the political system for their beliefs, and you won’t be able to support yourself if you decide to run to change things.
Tuesday was National Voter Registration Day. At the Arizona State University Downtown Phoenix Campus, student organizers from the Undergraduate Student Government Downtown and the Andrew Goodman Foundation were handing out donut holes to those who would take a minute to register to vote. YouTube Spotlight is running a #VoteIRL campaign to reach you in between your daily cat videos.
And I’m joining them, pledged to provide you with up-to-date information on registration, early voting, and finding your polling site to vote on that fateful Nov. 8th so you too, can decide the fate of the country.
Start today by checking out arizona.vote to register to vote and learn more about the candidates and ballot measures, such as the legalization of recreational marijuana and the raising of the minimum wage, and let me know what we can do to get downtown Phoenix voting.
Contact the columnist at ryan.boyd@asu.edu
