This week the Arizona legislature will open hearings into the clusterfuck that took place in Maricopa County last Tuesday, usually referred to as the Arizona primary, although technically ours is not a primary—it’s the Presidential Preference Election.
Protesters will also gather at the capitol (signs are posted downtown), demanding an end to Republican-led voter suppression. There’s a reason Arizona was subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, along with a handful of mostly racist southern states. Old-timers will remember a young Phoenix lawyer named William Rehnquist, who hung out at the polls and questioned people of color. There’s a history here and it’s coming back. Since 2013, when the Supremes gutted Section 5, Arizona’s extremist legislature, run by bigots, fundamentalists and the chamber of commerce, has only acted to make voting harder, never to make the right easier. Only more discrimination, never less.
[I]nstead of getting easier, it is getting harder and harder to participate on election day. What for previous generations was a celebration of democracy has devolved into drudgery that erodes confidence in the outcome.
In addition to last week’s shit sandwich, Gov. Ducey just signed a bill that outlaws ballot harvesting, a practice that tends to help Democrats, minority districts, the poor and disabled. Republicans gripe about voter fraud, but there’s never been a verified case of wrongdoing. Sure, there’s a lot of GOP-planted suspicion and rumor, mostly about (surprise!) young brown people collecting ballots. During debate on the bill Republicans admitted there’s no fraud, but said the law is still necessary because people think there might be fraud. Okaaaaay. Others said the practice, being legal, invites fraud. That’s a whole other diary right there. Sometimes I think these bozos are too stupid to insult.
Last week’s stain on democracy starts at the desk of Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, a Republican serving her seventh term in an elected office. Facing a $2.4 million budget cut (thanks, legislature), she decided to save a few bucks by reducing the number of polling stations from 200, the number in 2012, to 60 this year. Purcell and her Board of Supervisors, who okayed the plan, didn’t think the turnout would be high, apparently paying no attention to what’s going on in the rest of the nation. They also believed 95 percent of voters would use mail-in ballots, but 86 percent did.
Purcell et al were wrong on all counts and the results were catastrophic: some people waited up to five hours to vote, meaning the winners of Arizona’s contest were projected by the networks while people still waited in line. On top of the paltry number of voting places, lines were slowed by Independents, who showed up even though they’re ineligible. More troubling, lifelong party voters, both Democrats and Republicans, were told they were listed as Independents—perhaps the result of a confusing online voter or DMV form. In these cases, provisional ballots were handed out, slowing the process.
So it’s unclear how many people didn’t vote because: a) the lines were too long, b) voters were mis-identified, or c) the results had been called. Helen Purcell accepted the blame, although that hasn’t stopped people, including elected officials, from demanding her resignation, which she refuses to do, while people from both parties have announced their intention to oppose her next election. Others, like Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, have asked the Department of Justice to investigate.
When state and federal agencies do look into this mess, they must answer not only why the number of polling locations was reduced overall, but where they were eliminated and why there? Early reports suggest more sites were dropped from Democratic and minority areas than in Republican districts. There were no waits in toney (and largely white Republican) Fountain Hills, Joe Arpaio’s town, where there was a polling site for every 22,500 people. In urban Phoenix, a progressive and majority-minority bubble, there was one location for every 108,000 people. Latino-heavy West Valley districts saw polling places cut from 20 or more in 2012 to 1 or 2 this year. It’s precisely in these neighborhoods where working families with children can’t stand in line for three hours or more. The Arizona Republic summed it up in today’s feature:
[A] wide swath of predominantly minority and lower-income areas in west Phoenix and east Glendale, along with south Phoenix, were particularly lacking in polling sites …
Just a couple blocks from Helen Purcell’s office sits Sheriff Arpaio’s headquarters. A few miles southwest, Arpaio houses inmates in Tent City, a hell hole that can reach 140—limited privacy, shitty medical treatment, living on a cot and eating baloney, ostensibly to save me and other taxpayers money. Since Tent City began in 1993, Sheriff Arpaio has often reminded voters how much he saves taxpayers with his third-world treatment and meals that cost nickels a day! He says nothing about costing us at least $142 million in lawsuits because his office kills people, injures others and discriminates everywhere.
Why oh why can’t Maricopa County residents have nice things? Oh, because we have to pay for a baseball stadium.
That’s right, this week the Arizona Diamondbacks asked to be released from their 30-year lease of Chase Field with the stadium’s owner Maricopa County, when they’re only 18 years into the agreement. Why? Because the team maintains the wonderful facility needs $187 million in upgrades, and unless the county coughs up the cash, they’ll look elsewhere, leaving taxpayers with a half-billion-dollar white elephant downtown. The county responded correctly: No.
I don’t know the lease details, but if nothing else the team’s very public letter to the county is the definition of “bad optics”—coming during a week of controversy when the county’s election board eroded democracy to save less than $1 million; coming after a decade of officials telling us we can’t afford good schools and universities, health care or children’s services. Heck, the original 1997 stadium vote was hard enough in better times: when county officials agreed to the tax that raised $238 million for the baseball stadium, Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox was friggin’ shot by a disgruntled nutball. As a result of the team’s ill-timed, strong-arm demands, the once beloved D-backs were lambasted this week by the public and even the usually friendly media.
Although public financing of sports arenas dates to 1923, recently some local governments may be rethinking the game—one that pits them against other cities, held hostage by teams who demand snazzier corporate boxes, more entertainment attractions and fancy locker rooms for multi-millionaires, all of it pushing ticket prices beyond the reach of many fans. More studies see through the “economic development” BS that sports franchises use to lobby city councils, county supervisors, legislators and the public. The D-backs talk about $8.2 billion in economic development, but when you drill down to the bottom of that number, the real “development” is for the team’s billionaire owners.
A fraction of $187 million would’ve meant no long lines for voters last week. And more democracy. Just not as many hot dogs and beers. I go to a dozen or so games a year but could get by with MLB-TV, so how ‘bout we let the D-backs walk and turn the stadium into a big voting booth? Put a school in left field and a health clinic in right. Create a nice little hotel in the innards, and Arpaio’s inmates can live there and manage the place. Let’s play two!