Court found Arizona voting laws discriminate on basis of race

Arizona will be one of the vital battlegrounds in this fall's presidential election. For decades it was deeply conservative, home-base to some of the country's most extreme right wingers. But these days, it's getting bluer as the population becomes less solely white and more diverse. The state's Republican legislators have responded to what they experience as a threat in the usual GOPer way: they have enacted measures to make it harder for people of color to vote at all -- and also harder to make sure their votes are counted.

In late January, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals banned a couple of these dodges. According to Slate's Mark Joseph Stern the court was forthright:

Arizona Republicans’ recent crackdown on voting rights was motivated by racism. The court invalidated a law that was plainly designed to stop Native American, Hispanic, and black voters from casting a ballot—not just because it happened to burden minorities more than whites, but because it is flat-out racist.

Arizona’s “long history of race-based voting discrimination,” combined with legislators’ “false, race-based” claims of voter fraud “unmistakably reveal” an intent to discriminate on the basis of race, the 9th Circuit announced.

The law in question created a policy that if duly registered voters dropped off their ballot at a precinct other than the one to which they were assigned, their ballot would be "provisional" -- and the practice was simply to throw those votes out. All of them.

From 2008 to 2016, Arizona discarded 38,335 OOP [Out Of Precinct] ballots cast by registered voters, exponentially more than any other state.

Voters’ assigned polling places change constantly, even month to month, and those assignments can be suspiciously inconvenient. Some polling places are located at the very edge of a precinct, and many citizens live closer to a different polling place within their precinct—at which they nonetheless are forbidden to vote.

This system places a heavy burden on people of color. In 2016, for example, the rate of OOP voting in Pima County was 150 percent higher for Hispanics, 80 percent higher for blacks, and 74 percent higher for Native Americans than for white voters. Across the state, racial minorities voted OOP at twice the rate of whites.

Why so many OOP ballots in the first place? Arizona election authorities have been vigorously closing polling places since the state was released from Voting Rights Act oversight by the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County decision. This has created particular burdens for older disabled people and the residents of Arizona's extensive Native American reservations.

The number of polls in Arizona has dropped by the hundreds since 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down parts of the federal Voting Rights Act, including oversight of election laws in Arizona and eight other states. ...Arizona had 400 polling locations in 2005; today, it has only 60, said Darrell Hill, Arizona’s policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union [in a Congressional hearing].

[Stephen] Lewis, [governor of the Gila River Indian Community,] said Election Day is treated as a family tradition for Native Americans in Arizona. It is an opportunity for families to catch up on politics and demonstrate to their young ones why voting is important. ... But Native Americans living in rural areas face a slew of obstacles, whether with mail-in ballots or voting in person.

“Tribal cards do not include addresses, do not have standard county addresses, and many tribal members do not receive mail at their homes,” [Navajo Nation President Jonathan] Nez said.

“Sometimes up to five families have to share a single P.O. box.” ... “There is no public transportation here on the reservations. In some parts of the Navajo Nation, only 1 in 10 families owns a vehicle,” said Nez said.

For the moment, the federal courts have corrected some of the racial barriers that Arizona Republicans have thrown up against voting. But these decisions can be appealed to a U.S. Supreme Court now packed with justices who have shown little concern for the rights of people of color. It remains to be seen whether the 9th Circuit decision will survive review.

On a more positive note, the struggle of Arizonans of all colors for more fair election administration should have gotten a boost from the result of the 2018 election: for the first time since 1995, the state elected a Democratic Secretary of State, the officer who oversees the election system. Elections can have consequences. Step by step ...

I am working with Seed the Vote on sending California volunteers to work with Arizona community groups on the November election -- so I'll be sharing what I learn about the state's elections here.