Last Thursday, just one day after America celebrated its anniversary of independence, Arizona voters took a monumental stand to reclaim their democracy from special interests in a grassroots campaign that should inspire us all.
Persevering through the intense heat of Arizona’s summer sun, thousands of volunteers collected and turned in 285,768 signatures in an effort to qualify the proposed “Outlaw Dirty Money” amendment for the November 2018 ballot. With nearly 25,000 petition sheets filling almost 100 boxes on the day of filing, this campaign was an achievement of Herculean magnitude—and a clear demonstration that Arizona voters are fed up with secret, unaccountable money in their elections.
Over the past decade, special interests have used “dark money” time and again to achieve political outcomes that benefit their bottom line at the expense of what’s good for the public—from blocking utility regulation to de-funding public education, and putting more than $15M into the last statewide election to help their favored candidates win office.
In March, the city of Tempe passed a charter amendment based on the proposed “Outlaw Dirty Money” measure with an overwhelming 91% of voter support, requiring full transparency of the money being spent in their city elections. However, Arizona’s state legislature and governor rallied to protect dark-money special interests by passing a new law preventing cities like Tempe from adopting their own transparency requirements—an action that can only be viewed as an affront to democracy in Arizona.
If passed, the Outlaw Dirty Money amendment would provide all Arizona voters with a constitutional guarantee of transparency surrounding the money being spent in their elections, requiring groups spending more than $10,000 on political campaigns to disclose donors of $2,500 or more.
This is the kind of transparency that Arizonans deserve. It will support a political system that responds to the will of the people—as opposed to one that does the bidding of deep-pocketed secret donors who run deceptive campaigns to advance their own agendas at all costs.
Now that signatures have been filed, it will be up to the state’s signature validation process to determine whether or not Arizonans are given the chance to vote on the Outlaw Dirty Money amendment in November. With hundreds of thousands of voices joining together in the call for a statewide vote—60,000 more than the number required to qualify for the ballot—this is a chance that Arizona voters have more than earned.
But regardless of what happens, the overwhelming display of grassroots support that has made qualification possible is in and of itself remarkable. The people of Arizona have cried out and made their voices heard in no uncertain terms: dark money isn’t welcome in Arizona elections—voters should have a right to know who is spending money to influence their decisions at the ballot box.
For other states, what Arizona voters have achieved should be a leading example. Their call for a transparent democracy that serves people, not special interests, must now be taken up and made to reverberate through the streets across our nation.
