In an exclusive interview, the Arizona State Senator who authored the ballot harvest ban law upheld on Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court told Breitbart News late Thursday night, “The Supreme Court found the exact opposite of what Democrats have claimed.”
“Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee affirms that I as the primary sponsor of HB 2023, and my colleagues in the legislature who voted for it, did not do it with discriminatory intent. That’s what the Democrats have been saying for five years,” State Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita (R-3) told Breitbart News.
“The Democrats owe Arizona voters an apology,” she added.
Ugenti-Rita elaborated on why the Supreme Court upheld HB 2023.
“I agree with Justice Alito when he wrote in the majority opinion that ‘Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act provides vital protection against discriminatory voting rules, and no one suggests that discrimination in voting has been extirpated, or that the threat has been eliminated,’ ” she added.
“And I also agree with the very next sentence in Justice Alito’s opinion, that ‘Section 2 does not deprive the States of their authority to establish non-discriminatory voting rules.’ That’s exactly what we did when we passed HB 2023 in 2016, and that’s why the Supreme Court ruled to uphold that law with a six to three majority vote,” she continued.
“The big takeaway is that a State can take preventive measures against election fraud without waiting for that fraud to happen first,” Ugenti-Rita concluded.
She also pointed out that she agreed with the very first sentence of Justice Alito’s opinion, in which he stated, “Arizona law generally makes it very easy to vote.”
Ugenti-Rita noted that she has been working on election law issues for many years, first in the Arizona House of Representatives, and now in the Arizona State Senate.
“I could see the fight for our constitutional republic was going to revolve around election law. This is where the manipulation is happening. This is where bad actors can tip the scales in their favor by weakening and manipulating our election laws,” she noted.
Ugenti-Rita released her first statement on the Supreme Court decision Thursday morning in a tweet.
“Five years ago I authored Arizona’s ban on ballot harvesting to protect the integrity of our elections and ensure free and fair elections in Arizona. Despite Democrats’ continual effort to exploit the judicial system to circumvent the will of the public and levy false accusations of racism and suppression, I’m gratified the U.S. Supreme Court saw through the rhetoric on behalf of the voters,” she tweeted.
pic.twitter.com/khbYq8sZLO
— Michelle Ugenti-RITA (@MichelleUgenti) July 1, 2021
Ugenti-Rita recently announced that she is a candidate for the Republican nomination for Secretary of State.