Soros Suffers A Humiliating Defeat In Arizona

When the Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Proposition 210, a ballot initiative to overturn Arizona’s new election integrity law that was funded by George Soros, cannot appear on the November ballot because it lacked the necessary signatures, supporters of election integrity scored a significant victory.

Arizona is one of the states that concluded that legislative changes were required in the wake of the 2020 election in order to boost public trust in the outcome of the vote and make voting simple but difficult to cheat.

The Arizona Constitution permits ballot initiatives to override legislation approved by elected legislators. Many of these projects impose regulations that lawmakers ultimately decide against. One such left-wing project was Arizona’s mandated taxpayer sponsorship of political campaigns, which the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated in the case Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett as a violation of the First Amendment (2011).

The latest attempt to overthrow the Grand Canyon State’s elected legislature was largely funded by billionaire activist George Soros through his Open Society Foundation and Way to Win, which is another activist group that takes credit for Dem. victories in 2020. The money was channeled through a left-wing organization called Arizonans for Free and Fair Elections. More than 475,000 signatures were presented by the well-funded activists.

The legitimacy of these signatures was disputed by conservatives. The Arizona Supreme Court referred the case back to a judge in Maricopa County for further consideration following a round of litigation. Last Thursday, the trial judge ruled that the organizers had just about obtained the required 239,926 signatures, surpassing that threshold by just a few thousand votes.

However, after receiving another appeal, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that it was “impossible to verify the validity rate employed by the trial court” and commanded the trial judge to defend his findings by Friday at noon. The Arizona Supreme Court determined that the ballot measure did not have enough valid signatures to advance to the election in November after the trial judge failed to defend his estimates.

Former Ohio Sec. of State Ken Blackwell, head of the Center for Election Integrity at the AFPI, exclusively told Breitbart News, “The irony is sweet, because signature verification is a common election integrity requirement. Exactly the kind of thing the Left wants to prevent is having a ballot issue involving elections not authorized for the ballot because not enough eligible voters supported it. The need of those precautions is highlighted by the fact that the ballot item in question was intended to eliminate such electoral safeguards.”

A coalition effort was successful in its resistance to the Soros-supported program. The action was brought by Scot Mussi, head of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, the same group that prevailed in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 over another ballot measure. Jason Snead of the Honest Elections Project, and Jessica Anderson of Heritage Action, as well as other supporters of election integrity including Blackwell and the former attorney general of Virginia Ken Cuccinelli, helped Mussi in his endeavors.

Blackwell continued, “This triumph shows that the American people are stronger than militant leftist campaigners like Soros, who are seeking to fundamentally change America. The U.S. is a center-right country, and while hundreds of millions of dollars in dark money may damage democracy by gaslighting voters and astroturfing problems, the people of American have enough wisdom and principle to be able to overcome such efforts.”

The Soros-backed initiative would have overturned Arizona’s election integrity regulations in time for the 2024 presidential election if it had been successful.