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Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comments from Randy Miller, one of the candidates on the Clean Energy Team slate, and from SRP.
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An unusually high-profile set of leadership elections at the Salt River Project will finally culminate on April 7, with the utility’s future hanging in the balance.
The elections have pitted a progressive, Democrat-leaning “Clean Energy Team” slate against a more pro-industry slate backed in part by Turning Point Action, the political arm of the right-wing activist group Turning Point USA. A related group, Arizonans for Responsible Growth, has also backed the pro-industry slate, although Google recently clawed back a donation to the group, possibly over its connection to Turning Point. At stake is what SRP customers will pay for power going forward — the pro-industry slate is thought to be more hostile to renewable energy and friendlier to data centers, while the Clean Energy Team (as its name suggests) is not.
Suffice it to say, the involvement of a well-known and controversial group like Turning Point has increased the attention on the SRP elections, which are usually sleepy, low-turnout affairs.
Part of what Turning Point can bring is a ground game, knocking on doors and increasing turnout among property owners in SRP’s coverage area, which covers much of Phoenix and the East Valley. In recent days, photos have circulated of groups of Turning Point volunteers holding bunches of completed ballots inside their ballot envelopes that they’ve collected to be turned in. One person who posted such photos tagged the account associated with Turning Point Action.
The practice of collecting completed ballots from voters is called ballot chasing or ballot harvesting, and some left-leaning social media accounts have called out Turning Point for engaging in the practice. Arizona law specifically states that “a person who knowingly collects voted or unvoted early ballots from another person is guilty of a class 6 felony,” though postal workers, election officials, and family and household members are excepted from that rule. So is Turning Point doing something illegal?
No. SRP elections fall under another exception to the law. The Salt River Project is an agricultural improvement district, elections for which are specifically exempted from Arizona’s laws about ballot harvesting. Basically, if Turning Point were to harvest ballots for GOP gubernatorial candidate Andy Biggs in a few months, that would be a problem. But it’s a sanctioned activity for SRP elections.
That’s the understanding of Randy Miller, who is a current SRP board member and is running as part of the Clean Energy Team slate for the district council. “It’s totally within the rules of the game,” Miller told New Times in a phone interview. “That’s not a problem.” He said he’s concerned that Turning Point is collecting ballots and holding them overnight, contrary to what Miller says are SRP rules about turning them in the same day, but that the act of collecting them is allowed.
“I think it should always be OK to collect ballots for other people,” Miller said.
In an email, SRP spokesperson Jennifer Schuricht said that SRP asks ballot collectors to turn them in “on the same day collected unless dropping off would occur after the close of the voting center for that day, but as soon as practical on the next day that the voting center is open.”
Despite its legality, Miller said there is no corresponding large-scale ballot-collecting effort on behalf of the Clean Energy Team. The slate’s volunteers will collect and turn in ballots on occasion — “For people who aren’t physically able to do it, we’re offering to do that,” Miller said — but that, in general, “we don’t offer to take it for them.”
Turning Point certainly seems to be doing that, though, and its volunteers boasting about ballot harvesting have raised eyebrows, even if they’re not breaking any rules. After all, one doesn’t have to look hard to find Turning Point personnel railing against alleged ballot harvesting schemes by Democrats in past elections. Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, has tweeted repeatedly about it over the years.
Does Turning Point no longer believe ballot harvesting is an election fraud risk? Or is it just playing by the rules of this particular game, which it’s determined to win? That’s unclear. New Times reached out to Bowyer to ask about Turning Point’s strategy in the SRP election and his general views on ballot harvesting, but he has not replied.
