For Immediate Release
Friday, March 18, 2022
Contact: Hannah Goss, hgoss@azdem.org

RECAP: Arizona Leaders Defend Early Voting From AZ GOP Attacks 
“Mark Brnovich Won’t Comment, but I Will”
PHOENIX — Earlier this week, Arizona leaders held a press conference to highlight how GOP Senate primary candidates Mark Brnovich, Jim Lamon, and Blake Masters are running to dismantle Arizona’s longstanding early voting system.

In the wake of the AZ GOP’s lawsuit to completely eliminate early voting — the preferred method of voting for nearly 90% of Arizonans — Masters and Lamon have been entirely silent, despite the fact that they themselves have utilized the system. Even Arizona AG Brnovich, who is working to win the support of the conspiracy-theorist wing of his party in order to crawl out of this primary alive, “sidestepped” saying whether or not Arizona’s early voting system is constitutional.

Here’s what the speakers at the press conference had to say:

ADP Chair and State Senator Raquel Terán 

• “For years, our Attorney General Mark Brnovich has used his office to appease donors and supporters […] He’s running for U.S. Senate and looking for campaign contributors and party backers, so naturally for Brnovich, he’s staying silent on whether or not early voting is legal.”
• “Jim Lamon — a Utah resident of all things — has crossed state lines, set up shop here in Arizona, and is trying to completely ban mail-in voting. To that, I have to say, Mr. Lamon — when is the last time you voted by mail? Because I’m pretty sure it was a lot more recently than you’d like to admit.”

State Senator Theresa Hatathlie

• “Mark Brnovich won’t comment, but I will: Early voting is a fundamental practice in Arizona that long predates my time in the legislature and Mark Brnovich’s time in the Attorney General’s office. It’s a safe, secure, popular, and necessary way of letting every Arizonan — from right here in central Phoenix to the remote Navajo Nation — exercise their right to vote.”

Saundra Cole, President of the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans

• “Arizona voters of all political leanings — Democrats, Independents, and Republicans — including these Republican Senate candidates, have all been voting early and voting by mail for years.”
• “Arizona voters, especially Arizona seniors, will remember that Jim Lamon and Blake Masters are campaigning to rip away our right to vote.”

Sergeant Caleb Hayter, U.S Marine Corps veteran

• “The fact that Jim Lamon, who served in the military himself, is now working to cut the rights of his fellow service members and is calling for one day, in-person voting only tells me that he doesn’t care about me or my fellow service members and veterans.”
• “These attacks come from people like Mark Brnovich, the Attorney General of Arizona, who is unwilling to say loud and clear that Arizona’s early voting system is safe, legal, and secure. His behavior is cowardly, and in my opinion, a disqualification to serve in the U.S. Senate.”

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