Election officials in Arizona have closed hundreds of polling places across the state following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck ...
Election officials in Arizona have closed hundreds of polling places across the state following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act, a survey by civil rights groups has found.
The review published Tuesday focused on 13 states where the federal government exercised oversight of voting changes for decades until 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gave local officials more leeway to open or close polling locations.
Election officials proceeded to close 320 voting sites across 13 of Arizona's 15 counties, according to the report by the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights.
Most of those were in Maricopa County, where there were 149 fewer polling locations in 2018 compared to 2012, a reduction of about 25%, the report found.
At the same time Arizona has emerged as a battleground state with control of Congress and the White House on the line, Phoenix voters encountered long lines in elections during 2016 and computer glitches in 2018.
"For many people, these burdens make it harder and sometimes impossible to vote," said Leigh Chapman, director of the voting rights program at the Leadership Conference Education Fund, which compiled the report.
The way many Arizonans vote has changed, however.
Maricopa County has embraced vote centers, for example, allowing voters to cast ballots from any polling place in their county instead of requiring each person vote from their particular precinct.
"While the raw number of polling locations may be lower, the actual opportunities voters have to go vote in person are way bigger," said Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes.
Voting by mail has also become more popular over the past several years.
Arizona saw turnout of nearly 65% during the 2018 election, which was unusually high compared to recent midterm votes. Turnout for recent presidential elections has ranged from around 77% in 2008 to 74% in 2016.
Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes on Nov. 8, 2018, talks about a GOP lawsuit filed to stop him from counting certain types of ballots. Tom Tingle, The Republic | azcentral.com
Arizona had second most closures
Arizona saw the second-biggest reduction in polling places of the states surveyed, falling only behind Texas, where there were 750 fewer polling locations in 2018 than in 2012. Georgia closed 214 polling locations, Louisiana closed 126, Mississippi closed 96, Alabama 72, North Carolina 29, South Carolina 18 and Alaska 6, according to the report.
All of the states previously fell under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which allowed the federal government to block local governments with a history of discrimination from changing election policies in ways that could disenfranchise people of color.
That system effectively came to an end with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in a lawsuit by Shelby County, Alabama, arguing such provisions imposed an undue burden on local governments.
But civil rights groups saw the decision as dismantling years of oversight that were meant to protect the rights of people of color to participate in elections.
Changes in voting may have value for citizens, but counties have adopted such practices without the uniform standards or the analysis that previously was required by the federal government, said Alex Gulatta, Arizona state director for All Voting Is Local, an advocacy group that helped compile the report.
"What we do know is that, since 2013, there have been problems in every election," he said.
And not all counties with vote centers have closed large numbers of polling places, the report noted.
Navajo County, for example, has switched to vote centers but the number of polling places only dropped 4% from 2012 to 2018, according to the report.
Changes in Arizona counties
Here's the change in polling places in Arizona's counties from 2012 to 2018:
Apache County: 2% increase
Cochise County: 65% decrease
Coconino County: 14% decrease
Gila County: 48% decrease
Graham County: 50% decrease
Greenlee County: 38% decrease
La Paz County: 11% decrease
Maricopa County: 25% decrease
Mohave County: 49% decrease
Navajo County: 4% decrease
Pima County: 11% decrease
Pinal County: 2% decrease
Santa Cruz County: 29% decrease
Yavapai County: 17% decrease
Yuma County: 18% decrease
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