Having flamed out in his campaign for governor last year, and having failed to qualify a deceptive initiative to sell to voters this year, an increasingly destitute Tim Eyman declared Sunday at a King County Republican function in Redmond that his next project will be at the national level, as part of a right wing group hoping to adopt voter suppression schemes in “seven key swing states”.
“There is very little faith in our election system right now and we must restore that,” Eyman said in an August 9th message to his fan club.
“We want to make sure that in future elections in the United States, especially in key swing states, that valid votes are counted and invalid votes are not. There are many common sense reforms that voters will enthusiastically support and I’m going to work really hard with a lot of great people to make sure voters get the opportunity to pass those reforms into law by initiative.”
“I’ll have more to say on this over the next few months but rest assured, I am working each and every day as an initiative activist to make things better for our state and our nation,” Eyman said, transitioning from there into his usual appeal for money (“please donate today, mail your check here,” etc.)
Emphasis in the quotes above is Eyman’s.
The 2020 presidential election was an extremely secure and very successful election by every credible standard of measurement, but since it did not produce the results Trump and his cult wanted, they are now obsessed with stopping Democratic voters from voting in future elections. “Voter integrity” and “election integrity” are code words for erecting barriers to voting and rigging the vote.
While trying to sabotage Washington State’s collective investments in its people and future has been Eyman’s principal focus for nearly two decades, this is not the first time he has tried doing something different.
As mentioned, Eyman ran unsuccessfully for office last year. He has also dabbled in other right wing causes. On several occasions, Eyman has pitched his “services” to other people in right wing politics, hoping to get them to agree to give him money to qualify schemes to the ballot to preempt or overturn progressive laws.
But his history of double-crossing his donors and poor track record of pitching others’ ideas have resulted in him getting turned down, repeatedly.
After over twenty years as a serial public disclosure law offender in Washington politics, Eyman’s bridges are burnt. It therefore makes sense that he is looking outside of Washington State for a fresh shot at money and glory.
While Eyman’s message doesn’t say if this is a paying gig, I presume it is.
He also doesn’t say what states this group is hoping to qualify ballot measures in, but likely candidates would seem to be states such as Arizona, Colorado, or Nevada. Other swing states, like Pennsylvania, do not allow citizen-initiated ballot measures, but do have Republican-controlled legislative chambers that have concocted voter suppression schemes for next year’s ballot.
Georgia has a Republican trifecta and has already passed a new voter suppression scheme which is being challenged in court in multiple lawsuits.
Republicans are hoping that a combination of gerrymandering, voter suppression, favorable turnout, and historical trends will bolster them in 2022 and allow them to at least recapture the House of Representatives, which they lost in 2018.
Democrats, meanwhile, are working hard to combat Republican schemes to rig the 2022 elections. The party announced today it is setting the stage for a federal lawsuit in Arizona to challenge S.B. 1819, a scheme that Arizona Republicans created to allow them to put private, unaccountable entities like “Cyber Ninjas” in a position to decide who can remain on the Grand Canyon State’s voter rolls.
“S.B. 1819 was enacted as part of the Arizona state budget process in June 2021,” a statement from the Democratic National Committee and Arizona Democratic Party sent to NPI this afternoon explains.
“It gives the state legislature power to designate a private party to review the rolls of Arizonans permitted to vote in federal elections — and to determine the eligibility of those registered according to whatever process it desires.”
“The private party then may direct the secretary of state and county election officials to strike the registration of voters who have already been deemed eligible without proper notice. No role is permitted for local election officials who have already verified that voter’s eligibility. In sum, the law grants to a private party selected by the majority in the legislature the expansive power to determine who may vote and who may not; it imposes no standards or limits on that power.”
“S.B. 1819 violates the National Voter Registration Act because it does not have a standard by which eligibility is determined nor does it provide notification to voters that their registration is in jeopardy,” the party asserts.
“It also violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, both because it deprives voters of the right to vote without notice and an opportunity to contest the basis of their removal from the rolls, and because it impermissibly allows Arizonans’ fundamental right to vote to be compromised by an unaccountable private party selected by the legislature.”
What happens next in states like Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania will determine the nation’s trajectory. If we are to remain a democratic republic, voter suppression schemes like the kind Eyman plans to work on must be defeated.
