BAMN Victory in Arizona!

The Maricopa County Records office issued its report of its findings on the validity rate on Arizona Civil Rights Initiative (ACRI) Thursday, August 22. More than 43% of the ACRI's ballot signatures were invalidated by Maricopa County Recorders office. ACRI will officially be disqualified for the November ballot.

"ACRI Chair and Maricopa County Prosecutor Andrew Thomas must not pursue an appeal of his county's records of the fraud known as ACRI," said Shanta Driver, BAMN National Chair and lawyer. If County Attorney Thomas is anything other than a political cynic and a hypocrite, he will use his authority as chair of the ACRI campaign to stop the fraud-ridden ACRI, which clearly has no real popular support, from continuing any further.Former City Councilmember Calvin Goode, Maricopa County Attorney candidate Gerald Richard, and organizers with the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) demand that Prosecutor Thomas withdraw the ACRI from the ballot for pervasive violations of Arizona's election and civil rights laws.

The fact that the Maricopa County Recorder is reporting an extraordinarily high invalidity rate for ACRI of forty plus percent, confirms what we have known all along: that Andrew Thomas's petition campaign has been a million-dollar operation of bribery, corruption, and fraud,said Monica Smith, a BAMN organizer. The County Recorder's investigation only begins to scratch the surface of the fraud. Thomas's campaign illegally employed convicted felons to circulate signatures, offered out huge sums of money and rewarded ACRI agents that fabricated signatures, relied heavily and illegally on nonresident circulators, and bribed people to sign petitions. To add to that, Thomas's campaign shamefully and deliberately targeted Arizona's Latina/o and black voters, deceiving them into signing away the futures and opportunities of their own children.

"Thomas's campaign treated Arizona's laws and democratic process with complete arrogance in order to advance the agenda of resegregating Arizona's colleges and universities",said Maricruz López, a BAMN organizer.

"BAMN filed a lawsuit June 30th to keep ACRI off of the ballot, and they intend to join the Arizona Secretary of State and Maricopa County's Recorders Office in defending the invalidation of ACRI and take whatever legal action is necessary to keep ACRI off the ballot,"Driver said.

"ACRI's low validity rate also shows progressive Arizonans that it is possible to defeat these right-wing initiatives",said Smith. "By mobilizing voter education street teams, mobilizing the community to march and act, and investigating and exposing the fraud, we demoralized the petition circulators and caused them to abandon their previous methods. No longer able to lie to voters, they grew increasingly desperate and resorted to bribery and falsification and thus lost."

Thomas is chair of ACRI's million dollar campaign, which paid people for virtually every alleged "signature" they produced.

The results of BAMN's preliminary investigation into ACRI's fraud—including video footage and notarized affidavits from whistleblowers who worked for the ACRI campaign—can be found at BAMN's FraudFinder website and the NEW "finger prints of fraud" site, and stop ACRI Media Page