Local opinion: Rep. Rachel Jones must go

It’s time to discuss our current Legislative District 17 officeholder, Representative Rachel Jones, and some of the ways in which she tends to harm the people in her district as well as Arizonans in general.

Let’s begin with her very recent and not-so-veiled attempt at election theft.

Rep. Jones tried via HCR2055 to hand former President Trump Arizona’s 11 Electoral College votes before we, the people, even had the opportunity to have our say in the upcoming general election. This was an obvious attempt by a MAGA Republican to literally steal an election via political maneuvering.

Rep. Jones is attempting via HB2547 and HCR2032 to suppress voting rights in LD17 and throughout Arizona by banning vote centers. She believes vote centers are responsible for Donald Trump and Kari Lake losing their bids for president and governor, respectively. Nothing could be further from the truth. The electorate, not vote centers, saw through the lies and disinformation peddled by each candidate and, with the click of a pen, denied those flawed candidates the seats they sought.

Through HB2469, Rep. Jones, together with yet another LD17 malcontent, Rep. Cory McGarr, seeks to enable anyone the right to view your very private and sacred signature on your election ballot. Read that again! She wants anyone to be able to view, and possibly recreate and steal, your signature. Imagine, if you will, criminal elements having access to your signature and the harm that would come about as a result. Why are they doing this? Simple — Kari Lake and Donald Trump lost.

Rep. Jones, along with Rep. McGarr and LD17’s Sen. Wadsack, look to eliminate our right to vote in secret from the comfort of the kitchen tables in our homes. The contorted “logic” behind this suppressive effort is found in the body of HB2544 wherein she relies on an incident from 1888 — you read that right, 1888! — falsely suggesting, yet again, that our elections of 2020 and 2022 were “stolen” and “fraudulent” and thus voting by mail must be banned.

Rep. Jones continues to spread lies about the 2020 and 2022 elections. In her own words, Rep. Jones states, “Americans watched seemingly insurmountable leads in [the 2020] election vanish after a lengthy pause in the vote counting process and convenient occurrences, such as water pipes bursting … My own state of Arizona was called with virtually none of the vote counted, which set off the steal in the Midwest.”

Falsely claiming, as Jones does, that the 2020 election “was obviously stolen” is disqualifying in and of itself. (I’m detecting an election theft/voter suppression pattern)

Rep. Jones is an active participant in MAGA Republicans’ ongoing culture wars aimed at our transgendered community. Apparently, Jones finds transgendered people so abhorrent and disgusting that she felt it necessary to co-sign HB2391 with Rep. Alex Kolodin — legislation designed at harming, alienating and discriminating against members of our transgendered community.

And referring to the COVID-19 pandemic as a “scamdemic” as she does, which claimed the lives of over 1 million Americans and 33,000 Arizonans, is a repugnant insult to her dead and sickened constituents as well as to all Arizonans.

Anyone like Rep. Jones who constantly spreads lies and disinformation about our elections and who, in my opinion, does not at all care about public health measures like vaccines and masks and who does not listen to nor serve all of her LD17 constituents equally does not deserve the seat she holds. It’s well past time to end the divisiveness and damage foisted upon us by MAGA Republican politicians like Jones. Come election time, remember just how vile and unsympathetic she truly is and show her the door.

Enough of the insufferable lies! Rep. Jones must go.