By all accounts, last week’s Presidential Preference Election was a mess.
While Yavapai and Coconino county voters didn’t see long lines at the polls, voters in Maricopa and Pima counties were in line for hours, a few not casting ballots until 11:30 p.m., more than four hours after polls official closed at 7 p.m.
Under Arizona law, voters in line when polls closed are still able to vote, even if the end of that line is hundreds of feet outside the polling place.
The biggest problem faced by Yavapai and Coconino county voters in Sedona and the Verde Valley was apparent mis-registration of their party affiliation. On Election Day, March 22, I received calls and texts from voters who said they had been registered as a Democrats, some for years, only to discover they were now registered as “independent.” State officials have vowed to investigate these irregularities, and we would advise any voters who had problems with their ballots or registration to file a complaint with the Arizona Secretary of State’s office within the next 60 days, available as a downloadable pdf document on voter.azsos.gov. Voters can use the site to check the progress of the provisional ballot or early ballot. If there are any problems, file a complaint.
While it would be easy to point the blame wholly at “nefarious” elections officials gleefully rubbing their hands like silent film villains, the actual cause is less dramatic and far more bureaucratic.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted two key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with the 5-4 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder. The provisions required governments that had a history of voting discrimination to obtain federal preclearance before making any changes to their election laws which five justices said were now out of date. This allowed certain counties, notably Maricopa and Pima counties in Arizona, to change voting procedures without federal oversight and reduce the number of polling places open on election day in an effort to save the counties money.
The changes to the number of polling places came well before the current election cycle started. Arizona’s later primary usually just rubber-stamps the presumptive nominee’s road to victory. Election officials likely did not expect the one-two punch of absolutely insane chaos in the race for the Republican ticket, nor did elections officials foresee the Rocky Balboa/Apollo Creed boxing match among Democrats.
Under current Arizona law, only registered Republicans, Democrats and Greens were eligible to vote for candidates in their party in the Presidential Preference Election in March. Independents and “others” could not vote as this is a party-only election. This differs from other, open primary elections in Arizona in which independents and “others” can select one party’s ballot and vote on it.
Regarding this issue, which kept ineligible voters in line when their ballots would not be counted anyway, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey released a statement March 23, which included the following: “Our election officials must evaluate what went wrong and how they make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“One way we can fix things is to simplify them. That means allowing independents to vote in presidential primaries, just as they vote in all other Arizona primaries. A big part of yesterday’s problem was registered voters showing up, and being told they couldn’t vote. That’s just wrong. If people want to take the time to vote they should be able to, and their vote should be counted.”
None of these complaints will allow voters to go back in time and redo the election, but they are vital in making sure the 2016 debacle is never again repeated. Reporting problems at the polls is just as vital as voting itself, so we beseech voters to keep our election system honest.
