Here comes the payback for electing Biden and Kelly

Commence the payback at the Arizona Legislature, where a Senate committee on Thursday threw up the first of several roadblocks aimed at making it more difficult to vote.

Elections have consequences, after all, and given the massive November turnout of voters that resulted in a win for Democrats Joe Biden and Mark Kelly? Clearly, something’s got to change, right?

Senate Bill 1069 proposes to remove people from the permanent early voting list (PEVL) if they don’t vote often enough to satisfy the state’s Republican leaders.

Because though voting may be a right, our leaders certainly don’t have to make it easy.

According to the sponsor, Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, the bill is hardly worth noticing.

“It’s cleaning up our list,” the Scottsdale Republican explained during Thursday’s Senate Government Committee hearing. “It’s good housekeeping.”

It’s also a good way to ensure that only the most diehard voters enjoy the convenience of automatically finding a ballot in their mailbox while everybody else has to work for it.

If the bill passes, any voter on the PEVL who didn’t cast an early ballot in both the primary and general elections in two consecutive state election cycles would be notified that they’re being removed from the list. They’ll have 30 days to make a request in writing if they want to continue receiving an early ballot.

Ugenti-Rita introduced a similar bill in 2019, shortly after Republicans lost the first of what would become two U.S. Senate seat to Democrats. It cleared the Senate and several House committees but never made it to a final vote.

Had it passed, voting rights groups estimate hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters would have found their ballot wasn’t in the mail last fall.

Given that Biden won the state by just 10,457 votes and Kelly by 78,806 … well, I think you can figure out what’s going on here.

“The message is that democracy is not the primary goal,” Joel Edman of the Arizona Advocacy Network, told the senators.

Naturally, Ugenti-Rita was offended by such a suggestion, stating that no one is being disenfranchised by the bill.

“These are people who are not voting,” she told one opponent of the bill. “Do you understand that? They’re not voting. You can’t disenfranchise someone who’s not doing something.”

Disenfranchise? No. A voter who finds no ballot in the mail because they didn’t vote in, say, one primary election, can always go to a polling place — assuming they have transportation and child care and time off from work or another of life’s inconveniences that making voting by mail so attractive.

Discourage? Absolutely. See the above list of just a few reasons why people sign up for an early ballot.

The fact is, the PEVL has been wildly successful in Arizona since it was put into place in 2007. Too successful.

In November, 2.8 million of the state’s 3.3 million votes cast were early ballots. And while in past elections, Republicans dominated in early voting. This year, Democrats nearly caught up, casting 35% of the early ballots, just behind the 38% cast by Republicans.

Though Republican legislators will never admit it, it comes down to this: The PEVL has made voting just a little bit too accessible.

Note who is not demanding this bill. Not voters. Regardless of party, we love the PEVL as evidenced by the number of voters using it.

Not county elections officials. They already have procedures in place to ensure that voting records are kept as clean as possible, to eliminate those who have died or moved away.

So who is supporting this vote purge? Well, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club would like it passed. This is the group that ran a multimillion-dollar “dark money” campaign for their hidden pals at Arizona Public Service in 2014, stacking the Arizona Corporation Commission with friendly utility regulators.

Aimee Rigler, the Free Enterprise Club’s lobbyist, urged senators to pass the bill to ensure ballot security and that elections are free of fraud. (Something that curiously never was a concern when Republicans dominated early voting.)

Other than that, I don’t see any big hue and cry for throwing voters off the state’s early voting list.

Except, that is, from Republican legislators who in November saw the future of Arizona elections and did not like what they saw.

Not. At. All.