Records Reveal Scope Of Wait Times In Arizona Primary

[Purveyor]

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

PHOENIX (AP) -- Five polling places in metro Phoenix still had voters in line after midnight during Arizona's botched presidential primary two weeks ago, including one location where the final ballot was cast at nearly 1 a.m., according to county records.

The Associated Press obtained a document from the Maricopa County Recorder's Office that shows the time when each of the 60 polling sites closed in the March 22 primary, providing a more complete picture of the abysmal wait voters experienced.

Votes were still being cast past 10 p.m. in 20 of the 60 locations, meaning residents had to wait at least three hours to choose a candidate in the White House race. The polls closed at 7 p.m., but anyone who was in line at that point could vote.
--CLIP

The Department of Justice has launched an inquiry into the wait times and whether they violated voting rights laws. A letter from Justice Department Voting Section Chief Chris Herron released Monday by the Maricopa County Recorder's Office asked for information on 10 specific items, including a description of how county election officials determined how many polling places were needed on March 22 and whether potential impacts on minority voters were examined.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CAMPAIGN_2016_LONG_LINES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-04-04-17-42-48

[Zira]

1. Glad to hear they are investigating it.

[chapdrum]

4. Misses the story and the point

by a mile.

[L. Coyote]

38. What a total load of crap dumped here to disrupt. The poster should be ashamed.

And it missed the story by a mile.....

[Raster]

41. the poster deliberately dumped crap, it is their style.

[PatrynXX]

5. what does that have to do with anything?

seriously???

[renate]

7. I'm pretty sure you aren't in favor of people having to wait in line till midnight to vote, though

In a democracy, exercising one's right to vote shouldn't be a marathon.

I live in Oregon and what I brag about is the ability to vote by mail. It's insane to expect people to spend five hours on their feet to cast a vote that is almost certainly not going to be the decisive one in an election, and I think it's incredible and inspiring that so many people are willing to do that.

[former9thward]

13. We have vote by mail in Arizona.

I voted almost a month before the election when the state mailed out the ballots. Those people in line chose not to participate in vote by mail for whatever reason. Most of the lines were in Republican areas of Maricopa County where Trump voters were turning out in unexpectedly high numbers. In Democratic areas of the county, such as where I live, there were no lines. My polling place is a couple blocks from me and I went over there a couple times to see if there were any lines and there were not any.

[HawkMode]

24. Are you

In Maricopa County? Maricopa seems to have had the biggest impact by the lack of polling places. I wouldn't suggest either that Maricopa is Donald land. Youtube has plenty of video evidence of tons of Berners in those lines.

[former9thward]

25. I live in the Escalante precinct of Maricopa county.

It is a largely Hispanic working class area. No lines. Why do you think the AZ legislature (Republican) was so upset by this? Its because it was largely Republican areas that had most of the lines. BTW I am not in favor of lines in any area, R or D, but it is easily solved by voting my mail. At every opportunity the state begs you to do it.

[dchill]

28. Your observations are in complete disagreement with the facts.

[former9thward]

35. Where do you live?

That's right, not AZ

[dchill]

36. Proving that I know nothing?

[davidpdx]

37. Oregon is very lucky

I vote by mail overseas and have three options to return my ballot: mail, fax, and scan and email.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

8. you are ok with vote suppression now?

[thesquanderer]

9. Hillary voters had to wait too. Also...

...one wait is voluntary, the other is not (unless you're willing to give up your right to vote).

And one affects people who have the time to wait, and the other also affects those who do not.

[DaveT]

19. It does not matter whose supporters got screwed

It is a fundamentally undemocratic way to conduct an election.

I guess my biggest single disappointment in our party since the debacle in Florida 15 years ago is that nobody -- not even Bernie Sanders -- has made verifiable voting a top priority. It seems to me that is even more important than every other issue, because if elections can be fixed, they will be fixed.

The Arizona travesty included both the absurd decision to reduce polling stations AND the hack that changed voter registrations.

If we cannot have convenient AND verifiable voting, we are back to Joe Stalin's wisdom that it does not matter who votes -- it matters who counts the votes.


If you let your short term partisan interest get in the way of seeing that this is a simple and straightforward corruption of democracy, you need to take a deep breath and forget about Bernie and Hill and Donnie and the whole damned Clown Car. Think about how many people have given their lives over the centuries so that we can live in freedom as a democratic republic.

Arizona just shit on all their graves.

[paulthompson]

10. Are you kidding me?!

This is one of the most absurd posts I've ever seen at DU.

[mhatrw]

12. many clinton people claim they are the Democrats, but then support Repuke voter suppression tactics.

[passiveporcupine]

15. One of the silliest things I've ever seen posted here

Waiting to see someone famous at a "single" event, versus going to your local voting place, selected to process the people in "your local area" and having to wait hours to fill your citizen's obligation to participate in our political process.

And not all of us will stand in line for events or movies or sales. I don't think I've ever waited in line for more than a half hour.

[Android3.14]

17. Do Hillary supporters discourage democracy?

Because that sounds exactly like what you are doing.

[chapdrum]

3. Salutary lesson learned by DNC

and likely from Diebold.

If not that, then just plain arbitrary allocation and number of polling places.

Am a Democrat, but definitely would NOT put this past the DNC.

[angstlessk]

6. The DNC is NOT democratic

It is to the right of Eisenhower republicans...and are really in the same pockets as the republicans of today

[geek tragedy]

11. this was purely the doing of elected Republicans, that's well known

the offices that set up the polling places, and determined their number and location, are all run by Republicans.

[Igel]

18. But how it affected the vote is less clear.

(R) stood in line with (D). Clintonites with Sandersonians. (R) aren't especially well known for suppressing (R) turnout, but that has to be the claim.

It's not clear that the lines were predominately in non-white neighborhoods, or if it actually had an effect on the vote.

The long lines in Houston were, according to a number of videos from a few precincts, significantly longer 45 minutes after the polls closed when when the polls officially closed. Yes, there were long lines in some places in Houston after the polls closed, but nobody cares. Because Houston may be 60% non-white but it is clearly (D).

[sweetloukillbot]

31. Polling places were pulled from predominently minority and Dem areas.

That was the supression of Dems. Latino voters in South Phoenix had one polling place nearby. That was one of the ones that was open till after midnight.

I live in an area that tends to vote democratic but is wealthier, and I had a polling place nearby. However most of the people in line with me had travelled 10-15 miles to vote. And I still waited 5 hours to vote.

[Scuba]

39. You really think the RNC and the DNC have different backers?

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/11/democrats-and-republicans-sharing-b/

Democrats and Republicans Sharing Big-Dollar Donors, DCCC’s Million-Dollar Pay-Off and More in Capital Eye Opener

http://www.forbes.com/sites/katiasavchuk/2014/11/03/tech-billionaires-hedge-election-bets-by-funding-both-parties/

Tech billionaires crowd the ranks of the richest Americans, but most haven’t spent large sums on the most expensive midterm election in history. Those who contributed this election cycle backed both Democrats and Republicans — often at the same time.

http://time.com/3968470/hillary-clinton-jeb-bush-donors/

Here’s Why These Donors Gave to Both Hillary Clinton and a Republican

[geek tragedy]

40. No, I am saying that

people who blame Hillary Clinton for what the Republican Recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona did are out of their damn minds, and really have no place at all at DEMOCRATIC underground.

No sane person thinks Hillary Clinton conspired with Helen Purcell. That's Birther type crazy.

[yardwork]

27. Oh for God's sake. The DNC has NO POWER over AZ elections.

What happened in Arizona is terrible. It's our worst nightmare. And it's playing out all over the country in states taken over by Republicans.

Continuing to pretend that this was about the DNC cheapens and disregards the actual problem, which is far worse. We have widespread voter suppression going on. It's being done by the Republicans and the obvious plan is to STEAL ELECTIONS and fraudulently elect Republicans in the fall.

We need to focus.

[pnwmom]

14. Everybody at my caucus had to spend two and a half hours, not including

the time (an hour for me) spent waiting outside before they let us in. And this was true all over my state. It's just what we do at caucuses.

But it's just fine when caucus state people get our votes suppressed. We only care when people in primary states have to stand in line.

[passiveporcupine]

16. Yours is the first complaint I've heard of a caucus wait time

Maybe if people spoke up, your election committee might try to do something about it to improve the situation. That's what you have voices for.

[pnwmom]

21. We DID speak out, and loudly. All over the state. And they couldn't care less.

Our voters strongly approved a referendum to replace our antiquated, time-wasting, non-inclusive, non-representative caucuses (caucuses that in a record setting year attract 5% of the voters) with PRIMARIES.

Which, in our state, uses a simple, mail-in ballot -- as all our elections do. No lines, ever.

And what did our Democratic party do? It went to court to argue that they should be able to ignore the primary and choose the delegates however they wanted, i.e.. in the caucuses the voters had just rejected. And the judge agreed.

The GOP, however, accepts the results of the primaries and uses them to assign delegates. So they listened to the voters. The Dems did not.

And at the caucuses -- that we voters voted to end -- they have the NERVE to pass out envelopes asking for us to give contributions to defray the costs. Even though we're paying for the state funded primaries that they're ignoring.

Can you imagine how infuriating this is? To not get the primary we voted for, to have to pay for it anyway (because the Rethugs are using it), AND to have the Dems shill for money to pay for the caucuses we told them we don't want?

ON EDIT: It isn't just the wait time. The events themselves go on for hours. And you don't get a secret ballot, and might be stuck having to disclose your vote to a boss, a husband, a parent, or someone else you'd rather not discuss it with.

[passiveporcupine]

26. I can certainly understand your frustration

I'm glad I live in Oregon.

I don't have any suggestions for you, but to keep up the fight.

[pnwmom]

32. Thank you, passive porcupine.

And thanks, Oregon, for leading the way on mail-in ballots. That was brilliant.

Unfortunately our Dem party leaders are not as good as yours.

[passiveporcupine]

33. If there is any way an Oregonian can help,

let me know. I can't travel to events, but if you need me to add my name to a petition or anything, let me know. We need to keep all our blue states as strong as possible.

[jwirr]

20. At least the caucuses can just make more ballots - no one

has to stand in line for that long. You just can't go out and get another polling booth. And of course that is what they were counting on.

[pnwmom]

22. We stood outside our caucus for an hour FOR NO REASON. They weren't checking paperwork

or doing anything except making us stand out there. Then they finally opened the doors and we swarmed in and found our precinct tables.

And then began the two and a half hour process of voting on everything.

No wonder our caucus state draws 5.3% of eligible voters in a RECORD SETTING HIGH.

[Hulk]

23. Shameful, disgusting ass holes

That is criminal! If they get away with that shit, there needs to be demonstrations in the streets. Riots, if necessary.

[JBoy]

29. Utter bullshit in a modern democracy.

Canadian here, 53 years old. Voted in every municipal, provincial and federal election since I was 18.

I can't recall ever having had to wait more than 5 minutes to cast a ballot. Oh, and a paper fucking ballot, too.

[warrprayer]

30. K&R

for exposure

[FailureToCommunicate]

34. So they stayed in line to vote AFTER the results were announced! That's dedication.

[Land of Enchantment]

42. Thanks for the update.I read two petitions are being delivered via

White House petitions--one to investigate election fraud and another to demand a revote. The 'press' is reporting long lines today in WI and people standing for hours and leaving without voting. Why is this so freaking hard? We are our own worst enemy to allow them to keep screwing with our right to vote.