Proposed laws would target campaign fraud, illegal activity

Cronkite News Service reports that Arizona legislators are proposing new laws to more severely punish candidates who commit certain kinds of campaign fraud that now are only civil offenses. 

The proposed legislation, which would elevate such violations to criminal offenses that include stiff fines and perhaps jail time, is in response to state Attorney General Tom Horne allegedly illegally coordinating his AG campaign with what was supposed to be an independent expenditure.

David Berman, a senior research fellow at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy, said that the stiffer penalties would likely be effective.

“The existing civil penalties for this type of campaign violation are no deterrent,” Berman wrote in an email.

Read: Lawmaker: Criminal penalties for illegal campaign coordination