>> Coming up, local news on Arizona PBS, it's the journalist's roundtable and we capture a number of election reform bills being considered at the capitol and addressing a national shortage of pilots and what some describe as an obesity epidemic among millennials.

Good evening and welcome to Arizona horizon.

I'm Ted Simon.

It's Friday and that means another edition of the roundtable.

This is Jim small of the Arizona mayor and Laurie Roberts also with the Arizona republican and panel, good to see you and Laurie, let's start with you and these fake trump electors and we'll get more to what happened with subpoenas, but what's going on with this idea -- we kind of know, but extrapolate, if you will, but what happened with a lot of folks deciding, hey, we'll be the electors?

>> People have known about this since the day it happened in December of 2020, which means public officials have known about this since December of 2020 which means the attorney general of Arizona has known about this since 2020 and you had the trump electors who, we know, of course, were not elected by virtue of the fact that Biden won the election.

They decided on the day the electoral college met to meet anyway.

So they all went to state republican party headquarters, cast their votes for Donald Trump and then signed a legal document avowing they were the duly elected lectors for Arizona, this they were not.

They sent that through the mail through the national archives.

At the same time that is happening, you have -- what would I call them -- trump conspiracy theorists sending Emails to state legislators in the senate saying we have the technology that we can go through, if you scan the ballots, we can figure out which ones are bad and we can throw them out to decertify the election.

You connect the dots and this is going on.

You have the January 6th things.

You connect these dots and it seems like somebody had a plan.

>> Today's news is that the commission subpoenaed folks from seven states who send off fraudulent fake, whatever they are.

>> It's the U.S. house has to investigate and they've been sending out a serious of subpoenas to lead up to January 6th and roped in the fraudulent electors and a lot of it, in part -- it has since come out and we knew about this back in 2020, but the reason it's taken on a renewed importance because there have been definitive links to the trump campaign and trump's attorneys to orchestrate all of the battleground states and happened in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states like new Mexico, the state that Biden won pretty handlely.

It looks like there was a scheme.

There was a coordinated action to overturn the election and, basically, provide a lot of the infrastructure needed for the U.S. house and U.S. senate to overturn the election.

And for Mike Pence and instead of counting the votes to throw those out and instead count the ones from the Arizona republican party.

>> Yeah, and Mary Jo, where is attorney general mark Burnavich on this?

>> That's a good question.

He hasn't had much to say about any of this for some time.

Maybe he's too busy, you know, still examining the cyberninja's report for criminal wrong-doing on Maricopa county's report.

I wanted to add with the January 6th commission subpoenaing these individuals, maybe we'll get answers that we couldn't get from another one of the fake electors, Jake Hoffman, who talked to one of our reporters and provided some information but would not say, you know, who convened them and who told them where to go, at what time.

>> The two people subpoenaed were Nancy and Loraine, the chair and secretary of the what have you?

>> The electors?

>> The fake electors here.

Could the attorney general be tolding back because of a potential conflict?

And one of the electors down slate run for the office he's running for?

>> A bit of a problem, Jim Lehmn is one of the electors as is Jake Kauffman and then Andrew Kern now running and they were among these fake electors.

I think it's important to point out, though, it's not just now that Burnavich can say I can't investigate this thing.

A, if you can't investigate it, you could at least refer it either to local federal prosecutors or another organization, to another prosecutorial organization.

B, do not forget when this came out, Katie hobbs wrote a cease and desist and cced mark Burnavich.

>> I know that we managed to get an answer about this issue'^ and the answer was, well, the Federal Government is already investigating and we don't need to.

Reports that the department of justice is looking into what's happened in the seven states.

>> Very interesting that the AG would put it in the hands and hasn't played that way with a lot of other issues.

>> The Federal Government wasn't looking into it a few years ago.

If this isn't an issue of election integrity, I don't know what this mean.

>> I want to move into the election reform bills at the capitol.

Today we found out that another -- I thought I would never say cyberninjas again and we're finally finding out about these routers.

What happened today regarding the so-called self-styled audit?

>> This is basically chapter 2.

The cyberninjas did that in late September.

Looking at the routers at Maricopa county because there is suspicion that somehow the ballot tabulation machine would have to do that through a router and the senate was still skeptical and reached a settlement and we'll hire a special master and get tech experts and they will do this examination and the county agreed.

So today, special master announced they've hired three experts and they will work independently to take a look at the routers and Splunk logs and will report to him, he hopes within 30s and told it shouldn't take that long.

We saw the questions the senate wants answered.

It's three questions.

>> Well, three questions, but there's a lot of minutia involved.

It's like looks over an insurance policy.

>> They want these experts to show homework, basically, very elaborate.

>> I know we're paying $500 to be the special master, but what about the three additional experts?

Is there a ceiling to cut off the funds since it's coming from county taxpayers?

>> They will bill the county independently and will be on top of that.

Because the money metre is running at both the county and senate on the audit expenses.

Legal fees are going to maybe not break the bank, but they'll make this more than a $150,000 audit expect county is picking up a big chunk of the new expenses.

>> I think it's really important to be clear about what is motivating the look at the routers and the logs is one of the many conspiracy theory, China in a lot of telling hacked into the election system, changed all of the votes in the ballot tabulators and that's why you saw Donald Trump lost in Arizona where he won in 2016.

You have to step back, though.

This is silly because they have to pay for ballots and they counted the paper ballots and even if -- imagine someone did hack in and change the numbers in the voting machines and the numbers wouldn't have amassed the number in the paper ballots.

I mean, this really it's nonsensical and contradictory and what they found and with all of the other conspiracies is just basically making things up and throwing them against the wall and got traction and investigating them in the course of the audit.

>> And this continues the story and the idea that maybe there is some shenanigans which takes us to, Laurie, the election reform bills around the capitol right now.

>> There are 70.

Do you want to go through them all?

>> Every one and recite every one.

[ Laughter ] >> Raising the threshold for recounts.

Publishing digital ballots and make sure if you put something on the ballot that shouldn't be there, that can be redacted and here we start all over again.

>> They're saying no?

>> The lobbyists said that would be a good way to go.

>> The former county thought it would be a good idea.

Not the redaction but photographing these things.

>> I don't have a problem with it.

I do worry a little bit in conjunction with other things in these bills adding QR numbers and holographic things and serial numbers that nobody will be able to see, at some point, is our ballot secret anymore?

You can see that won't be shown.

When you show me a ballot that's secret and I'll show you a hacker that will find information.

>> Mary jo, we have HB2596, eliminates the early vote and allows legislature to approve or reject.

I mean, before certification, does this have any chance?

>> I hate to prognosticate, but this is a remake of the system and it begs the system that if the legislature can, you know, decide it doesn't like the results of an election, why should we bother.

Just let them decide.

So because of reasons like that, you wonder how -- well, I guess it's been introduced -- whether it's assigned to committee and debated.

>> Isn't that where leadership come in?

>> Yes, and we have a leader who has not subscribed to this election conspiracy out of 2020 and holds the election process sacrosanct.

You could have have a hearing but you don't have to bring it up to the floor.

>> There's another bill that would require anyone who wants to be on the ballot for the United States' senate to be vetted by the legislature.

Democrats would decide what democratic candidates could go on the ballot and republican candidates could decide would republicans could gone the ballot.

They vet for us.

>> There's so much skepticism on the voters.

I thought all of these elected officials duly elected, they don't trust the voters.

>> They don't trust the voters for the other people.

That's the rob, right?

And it's, like, you see all of these legislators and across the country questioning the results of the 2020 election, but they're questioning the result at the top of the ticket.

Their race was fine.

Wendy Rogers, no problem and even though she was on same ballot.

>> Mr. Philmore, the senate race, it would be one hundred and some years ago, the legislature would choose U.S. senators and then voters would choose members of the house.

So he's trying to get back to that kind of thing.

He thinks the legislature should have a greater role.

I would be curious if he would feel that way if the Democrats were in charge of the legislature.

Then he might have a different point of view.

>> Jim, the same bill says that it would require human hand counting of votes within 24 hours.

Does anyone understand how difficult a process that would be, A?

And B, you think fraud happened with machines, good luck, fellow, with the hand count.

>> They don't understand or they are willfully ignorants or obtuse about this.

He was asked about that and his response was along the lines of, well, I know if my heart it will be better do that that way.

There were three million ballots cast and each one was between 20 and a hundred races and judges and ballot measures and local measures and school boards and water districts and fire districts to count all of those by hand -- it took that cyberninja audit four months to count whatever it was in one county for two races.

You try to extrapolate that out to a hundred races and three million, you can't do it.

You can't do it in two months let alone 24 hours.

It's absurd on its face and they don't want to hear that from election officials and why it's better to operate in the 21st century and not in 1958 like we should return to.

>> This was a curious comment, I thought, as well.

We can talk about some of these others, requiring a special answer fraud paper and, you know, banning all mail-in votes.

Let's move onto other billed, including Mary Jo, guns on campus and we've seen this coming down the pike.

How does this differ and are university police departments anymore open to this idea?

No, they're not anymore open.

This idea keeps coming up because January Brewer when she was governor got a lot of these bills and vetoed them and went quiet during the Doocy era and the sides are lining up just as they have been before with an argument that having guns allows a good guy with a gun to protect you and having guns on the other hand presents a great peril on campuses and brings more danger to campus disputes.

>> It's worse pointing out, one of the arguments I heard then women can defend themselves against potential rapists.

There have been several studies that say women also never have been able to use a gun to fend off a rapist.

And then a mass shooting incident on campus, all of these kids can whip out their rugars and fire away and forget about the problems with that.

Just the philosophy of that is flawed.

The FBI did a study in the early 2000's of 160 active shooting incidents they looked at and only one was taken out by someone with a concealed carry permit and that person was a marine.

>> That being said and governor Brewer did veto these kinds of things and what governor Doocy do that with his position right now or hard to say?

>> I bet it's one of the bills that the signal gets sent that you don't want to see?

>> I think that's probably true and if it were to land on the desk, the rubber would meet the road.

I think it would be an interesting thing to see how he would handle a bill like that given all of the expectations that he wants to have a political future beyond being governor.

>> Jim, the education funding, we're talking about bills that are floating around and why not more about the education funding cap?

We have 1.1, $1.2 billion and ready to spend it and that could go kablooie.

>> We're not hearing about it because republicans don't want to talk about it.

It's not a priority for republican legislators or leaders in the republican chambers.

I think talks are happening behind the scenes, but I think these are hardball conversations because you have a lot of republicans who don't like the public school system and extract the pound of flesh to figure out how to divert money into more pet projects and school choices and let the school spend the money that the legislature -- these lawmakers have told the schools they could spend.

>> Yeah, I mean, hearing about it because they have another month.

[ Laughter ] >> This is going to be a Brinksmanship kind of thing and to exempts that from the constitutional cap, you need a two-third's vote and it has to be bipartisan and the Democrats will all vote.

You need republicans and they're using the leverage they have.

>> There's another issue and that's prop 208, the income sales tax on the rich.

It is poised to be thrown out because that money would exceed the spending limits.

If all of a sudden the republicans and legislature despise voters did that, if they all of a sudden waived the spending limit, there's a concern that they give new life in the long run to prop 208.

>> Because they could lift the cap on that.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> Regardless of what they do this year, that's a one-time raise and they have go back to the voters and have voters which is what they did 20 years ago when prop 301 first passed and they realized, wait, we violated the constitution.

They had to have voters exempt that tax from it.

So that creates another issue and then I think beyond that is the conversation is a spending cap designed in 1980, at 1980 educational technology appropriate for 2022 and beyond?

>> And I think that can lead to a larger conversation of representative Jennifer Polluck, a former teacher.

She has a bill that's not needed because each school district has its own spending cap.

Look, we can't keep going down this path every year.

The projection is that the 2023 school year spending will exceed the cap.

Should there be a reform so you don't have to have this agonizing.

>> All of a sudden it's an issue.

>> Laurie, as a corporation commission, the clean energy rules for the past five years, talk about kablooie.

>> A year ago, there was a tentative vote and it was 3-2 to pass it or the original vote was 4-1 and first two had commissioner Leah Markez Peterson and this week, you had commissioner Jim O'Connor and helped to broker the compromise for this bill.

He peeled off because he's confident that he can trust APS and the other utilities to do this on their own, to enact their own clean air standards.

In 2018, when he ran for the corporation commission, he ran against APS.

He didn't have a lot of trust for them then, but now, apparently, they are to be trusted.

So good to know.

>> And we should mention, this is a deal you put carbon emissions by half, 100%, I believe, carbon-free energy by the year 2050.

>> It's actually 2070.

>> Originally, 2050, but they bumped it up to 2017 and what happened to O'Connor, Peterson and these were one way and now they're the other.

>> Most people from the outside would say the utilities, the public utilities, APS, Tucson, electric power, they were able to change their mind.

But it is really interesting because even this compromise was agreed to and in terms of how do we get to this point, I think it's something that -- at least for me is an open question of who wasn't following the process.

>> We just mention Justin Olsen has said this process would raise energy prices and it sounds like both fellow republicans said, yeah, I think he's right.

>> Yeah, and the commission is being sued by APS for a rate hike approved and a lot of financial dynamics going on and you wonder if we leave this to the free market to figure out cleaner sources of energy, can we get there by 2070?

>> APS claims to have I own aggressive plan and saying we'll get to 100% by 2050, but will they?

The commission has lost its leverage to force that issue by letting this go.

Basically, they're back to square one.

>> How much of an issue will this be, do you think, for the upcoming corporation?

>> This is the primary issue in a lot of ways for the campaign, which we've seen in the past.

The last 20 years, almost, we've seen renewable energy and idea of energy mandates taking center stage.

So I think this time a combination of that and rates and is someone going to work to protect rates and keep rates low or work to advance clean energy.

>> Last question, Laurie, is that a republican and/or democratic issue?

Often down ballot you find people voting party and could this rise above that?

>> I don't think so.

I think that republicans will vote for republicans and Democrats will vote for Democrats because they don't know anything about the corporation commission.

The only time that changed is when the whole dark money thing was going on with APS because we know what our electricity bills do and we can understand that, but that carbon-free thing, most people won't vote on that.

>> We have to stop it there.

Holy smokes, you guys got through a lot tonight.

Thank you for joining us and you have a great evening!

[ ♪♪ ] Coming up on Arizona PBS, feedback is one of the worse cities in the country with fatal car crashes and what the city is doing to make it safer.

Break it down, chronic disease among millennials.