On March 22nd Arizona held its primary election to assign delegates to the presidential candidates. Like the states before it, Arizona selected a day in which American citizens can exercise their right to vote and help influence which candidates will make it to the general election in the fall. Thus far, most of the primary season has been going smoothly, everything is going more or less according to plan. That is, until the 22nd rolled around.
Arizona had some issues to say the least. After the 22nd happened I called my mom, who is currently living in Arizona, to see what she had heard about the primary. According to her, nothing had been shown on the news about what happened during the primary, so I have to assume if a resident of the state heard nothing about this some others may not know either.
Arizona had two major issues with their primary in March. First, the number of voting centers decreased from 200 centers open in 2012 to 60 in 2016. That is not for one city; that is only 60 polling centers for the entire state of Arizona. Not only that, but Arizona also requires that for your vote to count you must be registered with a party, meaning you must declare whether or not you will vote Republican or Democrat beforehand, so the Arizona Government was aware of how many voters they had before the primary even occurred.
The second problem occurs when voters who registered with whichever party had their affiliation changed without their knowing, sometimes even a day before the primary. If you are registered as an independent within Arizona you have the ability to vote in the primary election, but your vote is not counted when determining delegate totals. This means that anyone whose affiliation was switched can no longer cast a vote that counts. Their voice has been effectively silenced in regards to selection the candidate they would like to see run in the general election.
To make matters worse, some voters reported having to stand in line as long as 5 hours to cast their vote. Anyone with a full time job cannot afford to spend that much time voting. Some voters were given provisional ballots, which Arizona only counted 72% of in 2005.
This is not just a few cases either. The Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan officially called what happened in the primary election fraud. Greg Stanton, the mayor of Phoenix, has called on the Justice Department to investigate the claims of voter fraud and suppression.
Reagan claimed someone of her own staff had been switched from their affiliated party to independent, preventing him from voting. There is even an example of a voter named Bianca, who registered as a democrat in 2014, but when she searched her name in the state database could not find any record of her registration. It happened to people on both sides of the political spectrum.
Via wpengine.com
This is a serious problem. Hundreds if not thousands of people were not able to exercise their right to vote, and it is a right. If you deny any American citizen the right to vote you have undermined the entire philosophy of democracy. If our country is to run successfully we need to ensure that our population has the ability to vote for who they feel best represents their interests. Arizona has prevented that, whether by accident or on purpose, it happened.
If nothing is done to correct this mistake it is very possible that other states may experience similar problems. It is unknown how these problems occurred at this time, but it is vital that we remain vigilant against this kind of thing if we want our governing system to remain intact. Whether or not this happened on purpose, it stands to reason that either political party has much to gain by manipulating who is allowed to vote, and whether or not you agree with someone in politics has no bearing if neither of you can say anything about it by voting.
All we can do is hope Arizona has not set a terrible precedent.
