Arizona officials up to new tricks?
There is strong, preliminary evidence that Arizona officials violated voting rights in the March 22 primary election in two ways:
- Restricting polling places, primarily in Maricopa County, to suppress voting, and
- Incorrectly recording, in the official voter registry, registered Democrats as registered independents or members of other parties, thus preventing them from casting a regular primary ballot guaranteed to be counted.
In both cases, votes that should have been recorded were either not cast or, in the later case, provisional ballots were completed but may never be counted. Either way, citizens were denied their right to vote.
It is important to note, that there do not appear to be many, if any, complaints that registered Republicans were incorrectly recorded as something else in the official voter registry. If there were such problems, but I have failed to find them, then this post should be disregarded. However, I cannot find press reports of complaints from registered Republicans comparable to those coming from registered Democrats. So this diary assumes, subject to later correction, that the misidentification of voter registration was aimed at Democrats.
For reasons we all understand, restricting polling places in selected areas with certain demographic characteristics is a well-known strategy of Republican officials who want to suppress votes for Democrats. That problem does not need additional explanation here other than to note that this voter suppression tactic has reared its ugly head again here and is a one key part of the making the case, politically and/or legally, that Arizona officials violated voting rights.
The second problem—of misidentifying registered Democrats, but probably not registered Republicans—is an aggravated voting rights problem. And it is a serious red flag for Democrats in the general election. Misidentifying the registration status of anyone in the official voter registry, regardless of party, to prevent someone from casting a regular ballot violates the ability or right of that person to vote. That is bad enough. But systematically misidentifying the registration status in the official registry for Democrats, but not for Republicans, converts the problem from one of violating the rights of individual voters to systematic discrimination against voters on the basis of political belief.
Which gets us to the title of this diary: Was the Arizona primary just a rehearsal for the general election? Think about the following scenario. In November on election day, a portion of registered Democrats, randomly spread across the state, show up to vote to find that they are not even in the official registry of voters and must cast a provisional ballot and take later steps to prove they really are eligible voters so that their ballots can actually be counted.
Sound farfetched? Well, that is close to what happened on March 22. And it is only a more sophisticated, computer-coded version of what has happened with past purges of voter rolls in various states that eliminated a mass number of voters from the list. Only in this case, there is no advanced notice of the de facto, selective purge. An individual voter only finds out that they have been effectively “purged” when they go to the polls to vote. One can already see the explanation that will be distributed to the local election workers at the polls to distribute when people object that they should be able to vote: “If a person with a voter registration card is not found on the voter registry, it is because they have been determined by the Secretary of State to not meet the standards of an eligible voter. The person should be allowed to cast a provisional ballot and follow-up with the necessary steps to prove their eligibility to vote as follows: etc., etc. etc.” It is all the better that this selective purge will happen on a random, one-case-at-a-time basis on a hectic election day, because it will not be evident that it is happening primarily or only to registered Democrats. Arizona officials may even throw in just a smattering of disenfranchised Republicans to camouflage the partisan tilt of the selective purge.
If this sounds overly suspicious, even CT, then please (a) review again the reports on the misidentification of the registration status of Democrats in the official, electronic voter registry and (b) recall how for several election cycles, Republican officials across the nation have been creative, relentless and shameless in the methods they have used to suppress or void the votes of likely Democratic voters. They will get only more shameless and creative if they are not confronted whenever evidence arises of yet another means of violating voting rights occurs.
The possibility that the Arizona officials were test-driving a new election fraud/voter suppression/voting rights violation technique is why the entire Democratic Party, including the DNC and the campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, should be aggressively following up on evidence of the violation of voter rights in the Arizona primary. The Arizona Democratic Party is to be commended for its initial work on the issue. But the entire Democratic Party should be taking assertive action to uncover and stop, if warranted, what may be an automated, selective purge of Democratic voters tested live in the Arizona primary.
I believe that everyone who reads and posts on this site agrees that the right to vote is fundamental in a democracy. The number of differential presidential delegate votes at stake is minimal and irrelevant to the outcome of the nomination contest. Hillary Clinton and her supporters and Bernie Sanders and his supporters should be equally concerned about the conduct of the Arizona primary and should take sufficient steps in concert with each other to ensure that these practices are not repeated in the general election. A joint, cooperative effort by both campaigns might even be a bit of therapy and healing to help the Democratic Party prepare for the general election.
Please understand, though, that if evidence emerges that registered Republicans were affected to an equal degree as registered Democrats by the misidentification of registration status at the polls this past Tuesday, this post can be largely disregarded.
