Audit The AZCCEC

The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission (AZCCEC) was created by voters with a clear mandate: to expand civic participation, promote transparency, and ensure fair and open debates in every election cycle. Instead, the Commission has repeatedly acted as a partisan gatekeeper, shifting rules to exclude independent and third-party voices that threaten the two-party duopoly.

In 2022, then–Secretary of State Katie Hobbs abused her dual position as both election overseer and gubernatorial candidate. By controlling ballot access processes and influencing debate participation criteria for a debate she refused to attend, she created a conflict of interest that directly benefited her own campaign. At the time, the AZCCEC manufactured new rules to prevent my participation in the debates, even after Kari Lake made clear she was willing to debate me. This manipulation revealed the Commission’s willingness to serve the interests of entrenched power rather than the voters it was designed to empower.

That same pattern has continued. In 2024, and again in 2025, the Commission excluded candidates who had secured official ballot status—most notably Edwardo Quintana. Despite his rightful place on the ballot, Quintana was denied access to the debate stage. Once again, Kari Lake indicated her willingness to debate, just as she did in my case, but the Commission’s shifting standards ensured that only establishment candidates were given the microphone.

This is not a matter of oversight or error. It is a deliberate moving of the goalposts to silence dissenting voices. What began as a program to guarantee voter education has been corrupted into a mechanism for controlling the narrative, insulating career politicians from challenge, and narrowing the range of perspectives that Arizona voters are allowed to hear.

The AZCCEC was established by popular initiative to serve the public, not political insiders. By repeatedly excluding lawful candidates—first through non-debater Hobbs’ abuse of authority in 2022, and now through unjustifiable rulemaking in 2024 and 2025—the Commission has betrayed its founding principles.

If the Clean Elections Commission cannot live up to its mission, then it must be investigated. The Arizona Senate should once again commission Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai to conduct a full audit—not of ballots this time, but of the Commission itself. Only a transparent examination of its rulemaking process, its contracts with media partners, and its correspondence with political campaigns will reveal how deeply the system has been rigged against third voices.

Voters never intended for the AZCCEC to become a political weapon wielded against challengers. Arizona deserves debates that are fair, open, and inclusive—not staged events designed to preserve the dominance of two parties. Until the Commission is held accountable, its credibility remains in question, and so does the integrity of Arizona’s democracy.