The elections officials in AZ really don’t want minority participation… I hope that someone adds more voting stations, and that minorities come out and vote. If they do not, they we will lose. Donald Trump and his minions in the republican party will feast.
C’mon. This has nothing to do with “saving money” or any other excuse they want to hoist up the flagpole. This is a dry run for stealing an election. The only questions they really want answered are 1) What will the outcry be? and 2) Can we get away with it?
A better question, of course, is: What is Ken Blackwell doing these days?
How odd that “voting rights advocates” are required in this fine republic if voters are to be allowed to vote. How doubly odd that the oddness goes blandly unremarked.
We have a winner!!!
It is a standard conservative legislative tactic to disguise a simple but unpopular policy as one piece of a complex reform. E.g. Disguise cuts via block grants.
If they would have made the existing polling places into vote centers, that would have been sincere reform. But 200 to 60 really is all you need to know, and focusing on vote centers is letting yourself get sucked into their con.
There have to be more options. More days to vote.Vote by mail. Voting on line. I live in Massachusetts and renewed my license on line.
Everybody knows that the Arizona voting problems were a nefarious attempt by the Clinton campaign to sabotage Sanders. Or so we were assured in the immediate aftermath of the primary.
Hysterical anti-Clinton allegations aside, it’s time for the DOJ and the DNC to get off its ass and start actively and loudly fighting the restriction of voting access across the country, whether it’s intentional ratfucking by the GOP or well-intentioned but incompetently handled reform by the authorities.
I’m a poll worker, trainer and precinct clerk in my county in Florida (not South Florida where most of my state’s problems are). We are consolidating precincts and talking about going to voting centers. We also updated all our equipment this year, in an effort to make voting easier for poll workers as well as for voters in an effort to make voting quicker and less stressful.
There are a lot of moving pieces in analyzing this problem, most of which aren’t mentioned here, but money being allocated to the people in charge of running elections is definitely a major issue. As is the equipment, which elections officials buy but then the company has a lot of control over the software that runs it, and counties are limited in how they can alter it to fit their county’s needs.
Also, did Arizon offer early voting? We’re trying to encourage voters to utilize early voting, and voting my mail, which alleviates backup at polling places on election day.
And, as usual, the person elected as a voting official (or appointed) must be someone who actually understands the problems, not someone who just thinks they can walk in and make changes without considering all the implications for their county.
The article states that voting centers have worked well in other states. I’d be interested to know where. I’d also like to know if those places had similar reductions in voting places. In Maricopa county for instance they went from 200 poling places to only 60 with 21,000 voters per location. In the rest of the state the ratio is around 2500 per location. I don’t think it’s that complicated.
Arizona has an un-written law called “early voting, late counting”. In the last presidential election my “early” vote was not counted until many days after the election, and long after the winners were declared. The “law” allows for the state to take weeks to count the early ballots. Remember, this was 2012 not 1800, and information is no longer carried by horseback.
The Republicans’ voter suppression efforts have been going on for some time. In 2013-14, under “Fast Eddie” Farnsworth they began a full out assault and it still continues in a number of forms.
From Steve Meissner’s article: The Lege Pulls a Fast Eddie on the Silly Citizen Voter in 2014.
[Rep. “Fast Eddie” Farnsworth, R-Screw-the-voters bill HB2305l did a whole
bunch of nasty things in Arizona to keep the “wrong” type of voters away from the ballot box.
• It sharply increased signature-petition requirements for all candidates – except Republican candidates.
• Folks who help voters cast their ballot by collecting and delivering
vote-by-mail ballots would be charged with a felony. This follows a
successful effort in 2012 that boosted minority votes.
• Voters who ask for a vote-by-mail ballot, but don’t use it for two consecutive elections, would lose that right.
• Impose a whole bunch of restrictions on citizen initiatives, since,
well, you people really should let the wise Republicans who control the
Lege to do as they please. Don’t bother them with silly efforts to
countermand their decisions!
Now, some of you might think that’s a good thing. I mean they heard
the voters loud and clear. They realized they made a mistake so they’re
fixing it with a repeal – right?
Silly, silly citizens! Once last year’s measure is repealed by the
Lege, Rs plan to re-implement it, only in peace-meal fashion, through
six separate bills to do exactly the same thing.]
http://cactuscaucus.com/lege-pulls-fast-eddie-legislature/
http://cactuscaucus.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Screw-AZ-Voters.jpg
The entire country needs serious electoral reform.
“Voter fraud” does not exist. Election Fraud, however, is very much alive and well.
This is potential voter suppression.
People in AZ could early-vote by mail. Since older voters are more likely to vote by mail, the disaster in AZ on Election Day disproportionately disenfranchised young voters, who tend to be Sanders voters.
The last time Republicans and Democrats both had contested primaries was 2008. That year, Maricopa County, AZ had 400 polling places. This year, it had 60 polling places.
Whether or not “vote centers” are better than traditional precincts, “vote centers” don’t reduce the number of people who want to vote.
Reducing the number of polling places from 400 to 60 is voter suppression. The AZ Primary was an illegitimate election.
In addition to the problem of long lines, many Registered Democrats in AZ were told that they aren’t, and could only vote with a provisional ballots. The AZ Secretary of State plans to throw out those provisional ballots, using the same incorrect data which caused people to be told they needed to use a provisional ballot.
22 states have no party registration. The other 28 states should join them, so that voting is easier and people aren’t disenfranchised by having their party incorrectly listed.
I voted in Maricopa county on tuesday, March 22nd. I waited slightly more than one hour to vote. I thought there were couple of problems. One was inadequate voter education prior to the election about the changes the county was instituting for the first time i.e. voting centers. The other was registered independents waiting to vote. Since Arizona has a closed primary for Presidential primary, independents are not allowed. However, many of them still showed up and allowed to cast a provisional ballot (even though they were told their vote wouldn’t count, they were allowed to vote). It took a longer time to process these voters than the straight party voters.
It seems that being able to vote anywhere in your country is an advantage only if the geography of the county is such that a lot of people are away from their home precinct during the day and you can keep lines short enough that people can vote during a break from work or immediately before/after work. Otherwise it doesn’t buy you anything.
It also sounds as if there was something seriously fishy going on before this reduction, and the primary simply made the fishiness glaringly obvious. Even with 200 voting locations you’re talking about roughly 6,000 people per location instead of the 2500 statewide average. (And note eric_jaffa’s count of 400 locations in 2008, which would be in line with the statwide average.)
Scary stuff.
Last week, Chris Hayes pointed out that the average number of voters per polling place in adjacent counties was about 2300. After cutting the number of polling places to 60, Maricopa averaged about 27,000 voters per station (which was still 900 apiece before).
While they apparently assumed that more people would early vote, they could have at least moved the extra polling stations to the consolidated locations.
Hysterical anti-Sanders allegations aside, yes, there were a few people who jumped on the “Clinton conspiracy” idea, but I saw at least as many Sanders supporters pointing out that Clinton supporters should be just as concerned about this because of the implications for November. While most of the Clinton supporters were saying “Hillary won, so shut up.” At least with this diary, someone is now finally looking at the big picture - which is what this means will (or at least could) happen in the general. Democratic voters were systematically shut out, not just Sanders voters. If Hillary wins the nomination, those voters will be just as shut out from voting for her. That is what you should be concerned with, rather than taking gratuitous shots at Bernie.