The Morrison Institute released a poll yesterday that asked AZ voters about different issues that have discussed by the legislature this term.
What is most interesting to me and should be most interesting to you, Governor, is this:
[E]ight in 10 Arizona voters (84 percent) oppose allowing religious organizations that provide health insurance for their employees to ask female employees if they use birth control while only 13 percent support the measure.
Most telling, 60 percent “strongly oppose” this measure.
Opposition is equally high among men and women. Although registered Republicans are slightly less opposed to it (78 percent) than Democrats (90 percent), all subgroups included in the poll overwhelmingly oppose the measure.
Let's go over that again.
78% of REPUBLICANS oppose letting employers "ask women employees if they use birth control and why they are using it".
This one is on your desk, and I think has been clearly found to be too unpopular to enact. Veto it.
As far as the other anti-abortion bill signed this term, that was a closer call but may still have been a mistake:
Support is split among Arizona voters for a recently passed bill that bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, requires women considering an abortion to have an ultra sound test 24 hours in advance, and requires clinics to post notices that it is against the law to coerce a woman into having an abortion.
Forty-four percent support the anti-abortion bill while 47 percent oppose it
In other words, also a loser, but not by the same margin. Hope you didn't think we were all behind you Governor... Clearly we aren't.
My current hope is that these kinds of stupid legislative moves are what will galvanize the independents to vote in the primaries and drag us away from these fringe politics that the legislature has been indulging in. Open primaries would be nice as well, since despite being told by the board of elections that, as an independent who is registered for perpetual early voting, I should get something asking me which primary I want to vote in each time, I never have.