The results of the Maricopa County elections board reducing the number of polling locations to 60 for the primary election in March have been well-documented: people stood in lines up to five hours, some were still waiting to vote when the results were announced, a few locations ran out of ballots, and many voters were misidentified by party affiliation. Added to that, the problems were not spread uniformly across the county, with poor, minority and largely Democratic areas experiencing longer lines and more ballot screw-ups than toney white Republican districts.
Voters and grassroots groups went ballistic at public meetings and demanded the county recorder’s resignation (she refused); Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton called for a Department of Justice investigation (which is underway); and several lawsuits were filed challenging the primary’s results, which Secretary of State Michele Reagan certified, even though she admitted fraud had occurred.
The DNC and the Arizona Democratic Party filed their own charges, while the lawsuit filed by Tucson attorney John Brakey, a long-time Arizona activist uncovering voter suppression, claimed up to 150,000 people may have had their rights rebuffed. He also said, because there were so many technical errors, the central database may have been hacked or otherwise compromised. For these reasons, Brakey and others say the results should be tossed and the primary election done over.
The county and state tried like hell to squash Brakey’s lawsuit. Their main point, argued by the attorney general, was that critics cannot prove the results would have been different if the problems had not occurred. But that’s besides the point: it’s not really a “results” argument, or a partisan argument; it’s about rights, which were clearly denied. Today a judge agreed and said the case should proceed to a full hearing:
Monday's rulings from Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Gass mean the challenge to the March 22 election heads to a full hearing with testimony expected from experts and voters who allege they couldn't cast ballots.
One wonders if the county elections squad can do anything right. Last week they announced that mail-in ballots distributed for a May 17 special election on two propositions incorrectly described one measure in the Spanish language section. More than a million postcards describing the flub are hurriedly being prepared and mailed, while new ballots will be available at polling places. Facepalm.