THE CONSERVATIVES ARE TRYING TO KILL THIS NATION

….Voters waiting up to 5 hours to vote in Arizona

 

More reasons for why we need another Democrat in the White House.

 

More and more I’m concerned about the damage that the conservative US Supreme Court has done to our democratic system and that is being totally ignored.

 

When the 5-4 vote of the court gutted the Voting Rights Act back in 2013, they opened Pandora’s box that is causing devastating results.

 

Take for instance the most populist voting district in the state of Arizona.

 

Yes, the county of Maricopa, Arizona, is where they cut the cut the number of polling places by 70%.  The number of places to vote went from 200 in the 2012 presidential election down to 60 locations.  This sent this county from having one polling place for every 2,500 voters, to one polling place per 21,000 voters.  The rest of the state still had one polling place for 2,500 voters.

 

Of course, the Republicans running the elections said they did this because of the recent increases in voting by mail in that county.  But, cutting the polls by 70%.....?

 

With so many people in this election that want to vote either for or against the idea of a Donald Trump as a candidate, the end result was that for someone like Ms. Aracely Calderon, a 56-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, she had to wait five hours in line to cast her ballot. There were many Arizona voters like Ms. Calderon.  Some polling stations had to stay open long into the dark after their scheduled 7PM closing time, just to accommodate those who had been waiting.  But many voters decided to just go home.

 

This is bad enough for those that are determined to vote, but many people don’t have the ability to stand in line for hours such as the poor, the disabled, the aged and especially those mothers with young children.

 

The mayor of Phoenix, Greg Stanton, who has no authority for running the elections, but he was absolutely furious about the cutting of the polling places. The day after the primary, he wrote US Attorney General, Loretta Lynch asking her to open a Justice Department investigation into the matter.  Stanton said it wasn’t just that there were fewer polling places. There were also “far more favorable polling places in predominantly Anglo communities. There were fewer voting locations in those parts of the county with higher minority populations.”

 

Stanton said, “tens of thousands of people were deprived of the right to vote.”  A long-time Democrat, Stanton asked the obvious question: “Am I suggesting this was the intent of the people who run elections in Maricopa County?”  There was no question that was exactly what he suspects.

 

Before the high court had massacred the Voting Rights Act, the county would have been required to clear the cutting of voting places with the Justice Department.  That was because Arizona was one of the states that the law covered. This time however, the county officials are saying that "cutting the polling places had no discriminatory intent with their decision".  And because of the Supreme Court's decision, no one today can argue with that statement.

 

This kind of action occurred all around the country right after the high court’s decision and immediately in a number of the southern states previously covered by the law. Of course, the reason given by the conservatives on the court was totally absurd.  The conservative justices' stated reasoning was: “There are no longer any reasons for these laws as racial discrimination in voting is no longer an issue.”   Right!

 

Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice, has noted in his new book, “The Fight to Vote,” that Republicans have “moved with strategic ferocity” to pass a variety of laws around the country to make it harder for people to cast their ballots. The Brennan Center reports that 16 states “will now have new voting restrictions in place for the first time in a presidential election.”

 

The reality is that for the presidential election this November, situations like what happened in Arizona could occur all over this country.

 

This nation’s political parties have not been as divided as they are today for decades.  This kind of screwing around with our important right to vote is totally against what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote our US Constitution.  Thousands of qualified American voters could be denied their right to select who they want to run this nation.

 

I doubt that in the few months remaining before the nation goes to the polls, that any changes will occur to prevent the possible election catastrophe that could happen next November.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016