Arizona's Primary Voting Fiasco Foretells Further Disenfranchisement in General Election

Following widespread disenfranchisement during Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Arizona, civil rights activists are warning that such debacles could be a harbinger of things to come during the general election in November.

“As we’ve seen in the Arizona and North Carolina primaries, the Shelby decision has ushered in a renaissance of voter disenfranchisement and Congress must step in to stop it before the general election,” stated Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of national and international rights-defending organizations.

Because of the Supreme Court’s gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in its Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder decision in 2013, voters in North Carolina and Arizona, which both have a long history of voter suppression, are witnessing firsthand what elections in those states are like without the Act’s protections.

“Leaders said if federal scrutiny had been required before making changes,” as the Voting Rights Act once required, CNN reported, “Tuesday’s situation would have never happened.”

“I’ve waited my entire adult life, and I finally find somebody I want to vote for, and they deny me,” Jennifer Robbins, a Bernie Sanders supporter in Arizona, told the Huffington Post. “I left there crying. It’s always been my dream to vote, but I hadn’t found a politician I liked enough to vote for.”

Despite possessing a voter registration card that listed her as a registered Democrat, and after waiting for hours in line to vote, Robbins was told at the polling station that the computer system had her listed as an Independent. Robbins insisted the poll worker scan her registration card once again, and the second time the system had her registered to a party—the Republican Party. She was told she could file a provisional ballot for the Democratic primary, but that it “probably wouldn’t count,” according to the Huffington Post.

Indeed, Phoenix mayor Greg Stanton told Salon that “Arizona has a history of rejecting large amounts of provisional ballots and mail-in ballots.”

Stanton has written a letter (pdf) to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch requesting that the Department of Justice investigate the allegations of voter suppression in Arizona’s Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located.