The provision Schultz referenced was Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which the U.S. Supreme Court voted to reverse in 2013. “If it takes a federal judge to bring election form in the state of Arizona, I welcome it. I understand I’m a plaintiff on it, but I welcome it”.
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The Democratic Party and Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonDem Party, Clinton campaign to sue Arizona over voter access: report Pelosi predicts GOP doom if Trump toppled The Hill’s 12:30 Report MORE’s presidential campaign are suing the state of Arizona over voting rights, The Washington Post is reporting.
The Democratic nominating contest for the November 8 presidential election was won by Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.
“Consequently, thousands more Maricopa County voters will be disenfranchised in the upcoming 2016 general election if the State’s prohibition on counting out-of-precinct ballots remains in place”, the lawsuit reads. Democrats say it will make it almost impossible for voter-outreach groups to collect and drop off early ballots and is created to suppress turnout, particularly in impoverished and minority communities. Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan and Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell accepted blame for the problems and apologized.
Maricopa County, for example, had only 60 polling locations on March 22, compared to 200 during the 2012 primary.
The Democratic National Committee and the Arizona Democratic Party filed a lawsuit Friday morning in federal court over the voting disaster that was Arizona’s presidential preference election.
There was one polling location for every 21,000 voters during the March 22 primary, leading to wait times as long as five hours. The Clinton campaign will join it after it is filed on Friday.
The DNC said in a press release Thursday that the suit “points out that more minority voters will likely be disenfranchised in future elections as the direct result of a new state law enacted in March, which makes it a felony for one voter to turn in a signed, sealed ballot to the county registrar on behalf of another voter” and that the state’s policies “have imposed onerous burdens on Arizona voters generally and Maricopa County voters specifically, and threaten to drag the state backwards when it comes to discrimination”.
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has already opened an investigation into the irregularities in Maricopa County after the Democratic mayor of Phoenix requested an investigation. Many left without having voted.
Following the debacle on March 22, Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, called the massive wait times “unacceptable”.
In the lawsuit, John Brakey, the co-founder of AUDIT-AZ, accused election officials of misconduct, including cutting back the number of polling stations by some 85 percent from 2008 to save money. Bob Shrum, a veteran former Democratic campaign consultant, said he could not recall a single previous instance but said it attested to a rancid atmosphere being generated by the Republicans as they wage partisan warfare over voting rights.
She said Arizona was the first state to require documentary proof of citizenship from its voters, a practice that has also been adopted by Kansas, Georgia and Alabama. Few, if any, are expected to result in definitive opinions before November, especially since the supreme court has a track record of disliking last-minute rule changes in voting procedures.
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Democrats are also suing in four other swing states – Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina – over allegations of voter suppression against students, people of color, and the poor.
