East Valley Democrats

02/13/2024

CEBV is announcing the spring 2024 nonpartisan High School Voter Registration Drive Challenge in collaboration with The Civics Center with a mission to register every high schooler in Arizona.

Do you know a High School student that would like to help?

Civic Engagement Beyond Voting and The Civics Center are partnering with a goal of getting every high school student in Arizona registered to vote. Students & educators! If you'd like to run a voter registration drive at your Arizona high school, The Civics Center will provide training, materials, s...

02/02/2024

Join CEBV for a virtual conversation with Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts and hear from the "summoner of women's audacity" herself!
Wednesday, February 7 from 6-7PM - registration is required via QR code (see comments) or at https://bit.ly/CEBVWatts

12/01/2023

Gary Saiter, board chairman and general manager of the Wenden Domestic Water Improvement District, said utility records showed the surface-to-water depth at its headquarters was a little over 100 feet (30 meters) in the 1950s, but it's now now about 540 feet (160 meters).

Saiter said that over those years, food crops like cantaloupe have been replaced with forage like alfalfa, which is water intensive.

“I believe that the legislature in the state needs to step up and actually put some control, start measuring the water that the farms use," Saiter said.

A blanket of bright green alfalfa spreads across western Arizona's McMullen Valley, ringed by rolling mountains and warmed by the hot desert sun.Matthew Hancock's family has used groundwater to grow forage crops here for more than six decades. They're long accustomed to caprices of Mother Nature tha...

11/30/2023

Geography also plays a role in the Phoenix area’s air quality. The region sits basically in a bowl surrounded by mountains, with an inversion above that bowl that traps the pollution and air below it, leading to high ozone and other pollutant levels.

These inversions can cause pollution to “sit” over the Valley for sometimes days at a time.

“Climate change really is making it definitely hard to clean up and more burdensome for states like Arizona that have heat and sunlight most of the year,” Strother said.

That brown cloud residents can see over South Mountain is usually caused by a strong inversion.

Studies have shown that high levels of pollutants in the air, which includes ozone, lead to an increase in emergency room visits for patients with heart issues such as arrhythmias.

The mixture of climate change and human expansion is leading to more days where air quality is dangerous for people with pre-existing health issues, children and the elderly

11/29/2023

Over the summer, Horne threatened to withhold funding from schools employing the 50-50 model. The move earned a quick condemnation from Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, who wrote in a legal opinion that Horne had no authority to take action against schools for a teaching model approved by the State Board of Education, who he reports to. The board publicly rebuked Horne, announcing it had no intention of doing away with the model or punishing schools for not requiring the waivers mandated by Prop. 203.

Attorney General Kris Mayes

A lawsuit opposing dual language instruction for immigrant students launched by Arizona Superintendent Tom Horne should be thrown out of court because he has no power to sue in his official role and he failed to sue the right people, the defendants told the court.

11/27/2023

The Mohave County Board of Supervisors once again shot down the idea of counting all ballots by hand instead of using machine tabulators.

What happened in Cochise County may stay in Cochise County ... It's deadbeat ad season! ... And who's a bigger John McCain fan than her?

11/26/2023

There are 22 federally recognized Native nations within Arizona's state borders. The U.S. Census estimates that more than 6% of the state's population identifies as American Indian or Alaska Native.

In a swing state, like Arizona, where only a few thousand votes can make the difference, voting advocates say political parties need to recognize Native voters' power.

"American Indian voters have arguably been the deciding factor in recent elections," said Alexander Castillo-Nunez, civic engagement coordinator at the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona. But he said some challenges still persist.

Voter turnout on tribal lands in Arizona helped President Biden secure a win in 2020, the first Democrat to win the state in more than two decades. Native Americans also turned out in large numbers during the 2022 midterms, according to Castillo-Nunez, helping Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs secure a win.

Polling locations can be up to 100 miles round trip for some voters, there are language barriers to overcome and organizers want to ensure poll workers are trained to recognize tribal identification cards. While he said some Native voters in Arizona tend to lean Democrat, many register later as independent and most want to see follow through from elected officials beyond the campaign trail.
NPR

A voting bloc that hasn't gotten as much national attention, Native voters are an influential constituency in several swing states, making them a group to watch in 2024.

11/23/2023

“What we do have in common is our commitment to protecting our fragile democracy and our shared conviction that Gallego is best suited to do that.”

Arizona has undergone a political transformation from red state to national battleground. It’s why political ad spending is going to be the highest in the nation here and why grassroots organizations like Indivisible have identified our Senate race as a top priority.