On Saturday we received our mail-in voting ballots for Phoenix, Tempe to be exact, and last night I attempted to work my way through filling it out. These days, I vote liberal/progressive/Democrat. I wasn’t always active or tuned into politics, voting, and social issues. But in the last few years, like a lot of previously checked-out white folks, I woke up to how many injustices still exist, why it’s important for us all to care about them, and how voting can make a difference in the big picture. In this post, I’ll be sharing the Arizona 2022 voting resources that I used.
While trying to take a more active role in voting and educating myself about candidates, I’ve found the process to be daunting at times. There are the obvious choices. Like clearly voting for Mark Kelly over Blake Masters, not only in an effort to keep our Senate blue but also because Masters is Trump endorsed and gives off creepy vibes to the max.
I did a previous post on resources I used to vote in the primaries. I used many of these same resources to fill out the midterm ballot. When it comes to completing a ballot, google is also definitely your friend.
But it still seems like there’s a lot of info out there that’s missing.
For instance, the huge section about which judges to retain or not. I’ve heard/read that this section “doesn’t really matter” because the judges are almost always retained regardless. But tbh, that feels like a bullshit answer, ya know? Because some of these judges could be completely awful and we wouldn’t even know it.
I did some internet sleuthing and found a few helpful resources for the various items on the ballot as follows:
Judges:
Article: What to Know About the 74 Arizona Judges on the 2022 Ballot
Resource: Judicial Performance Reports
Takeaways:
I didn’t look up all of these judges on the ballot. I did look up the ones mentioned in the article and decided to vote no on Rusty Crandall, Matthew Hopkins, and Howard Sukenic.
Supreme Court Justices:
For this section, I used Ballotpedia to look up the candidate and their political affiliation.
I voted “No” on William “Bill” Montgomery who is listed as a “Strong” Republican, and mentioned in the above article.
I voted “No” on James Beene who is listed as a “Mild” Republican.
Ann Timmer is listed as NonPartisan. It looks like she’s donated more to the Democratic Party.
Looking at the Arizona Supreme Court Justices, there’s not a lot of diversity here. From what I can glean from the internet, most are Republican, if not all of them. On top of the fact that there are only two women, and from what I can tell, just one person of color, John Lopez, who identifies as a strong Republican.
Next up, The Propositions Section:
Some of these were easier to figure out than others. For example, Prop 308 is an obvious YES. But here’s what I used to help me decide on the others:
Resource: Arizona Progressive Voter’s Guide
Article: 2022 Election: Taking a closer look at Arizona’s ballot proposition measures
Resource: Ballotpedia
Takeaways: I couldn’t find a lot of info on some of these props, like Prop 130, 131, and 310. I ended up selecting “Yes” to those. But if any progressive voting folks have thoughts on these, I’d love to hear them.
The Education Section:
There are a few items on my ballot about the Tempe School District as well as the Maricopa County Community College District. I attended MCCCD’s, love them, and have a great passion and support for them.
For the MCCCD District At-Large vote, I went with Kelli Butler. She’s a woman and part of the Democratic party. Seems better than the other option.
For the sections on Tempe High Schools, I voted “Yes” to all questions using the info provided on this site.
That’s about as far as I’ve made it through my ballot so far, but I’ll update this list as I continue to complete the sections and find out information.
The deadline for mail-in voting is 7 days before Election Date, November 8th. So we’re aiming to get our ballots in the mail no later than Nov. 1st!
If you have any additional helpful Arizona 2022 voting resources, please share them in the comments. Thank you!