America is supposed to be a democracy. It looks down and criticizes other countries that don't have fair elections. Consider African nations and their illegal election campaigns. But it would seem that the state of Arizona is no better off than despot regions when it comes to electioneering.
The GOP are attempting to "hack" the legal status of libertarian candidates in Arizona and forcibly remove them from the ballot so that voters won't have the option to vote for them. This is due to a legal dispute on the number of signatures required from each party by their "registered" voters in order to get a candidate on the ballot. This is best explained in this article:
https://ivn.us/2018/06/29/arizona-gop-war-libertarian-party/
I live in Arizona and I am a registered Libertarian voter. It was a big surprise when our mail in ballots for the 2018 primary elections arrived and my ballot was completely blank of candidate names. Thinking that there must be some sort of mistake, I began to peel back the onion on this and found out why. It is disgusting.
Here's the strategy from the GOP point of view.... Libertarian is an option that GOP voters may choose since it has some parallels with their fiscal conservative values, but focuses more on the individual sovereignty of the person rather than the state. In a time where the USA is constantly embarrassing itself to the rest of the world, it is highly likely that GOP voters may choose not to support their local GOP candidates but find that they can't bring themselves to vote DEM on the ballot. What would they do here? Probably either not vote at all, or vote LIB. It makes sense.
But the GOP, fearing that this will happen and in a swing state like Arizona, want to remove the option of ANY Libertarian candidates from being on the ballot. This just continues to serve the "2 party option" politics that has divided the USA down the line. There is a viable 3rd party option - the party of Ron Paul, and it should be embraced, not expunged.
I wrote in my candidate choices, and I'm hoping enough other LBT registered voters in Arizona did the same. If a candidate gets 3,152 signatures, they are on the ballot. However in order to ensure that the vote count is done legally and without GOP representatives in the Secretary of State office in Arizona, the Libertarian party have reached out to registered LBT voters to act as "Observers". I've done just that.
The reality is that people should have the right to vote for whoever they want. And that a legitimate party that has been around for decades should have the right to have their candidates represented on the ballot. If we have degraded into a tin pot regime with voter suppression like this, we should be ashamed of ourselves. How a judge could allow this to happen shows a clear lack of allegiance to the very country that they work for and represent.
I have faith that we can ensure a fair and democratic election going forward, but I feel the need to expose this corruption for what it is. I hope other states are not experiencing the same unethical behavior in our elections.