After cost cutting, Arizona has a hard time voting

PHOENIX — When the U.S. Supreme Court threw out major provisions of the Voting Rights Act three years ago, Maricopa County in Arizona moved quickly to lower the cost of holding elections.

Among its first moves was to reduce the number of polling centers from 200 to 60. With fewer locations, the state allowed voters to choose any polling station in the county. The hope was to make voting more convenient and encourage more people to cast their ballots by mail. It hasn’t turned out that way. The result was stories of having to wait five hours to vote in the March primary election for president, a call to impeach Arizona’s secretary of state, three lawsuits and a Justice Department inquiry.

“I don’t know what the right word is to express it,” Arizona Attorney Gen. Mark Brnovich said at a news conference Thursday, speaking of his anger at the situation “as an Arizonan and as attorney general.”

Arizona has an ugly history with elections. Native Americans were long forbidden from voting because the state considered them “wards of the nation.” The state once required residents to pass a literacy test to vote and refused to print election materials in languages other than English.

In 1972, federal elections officials called Arizona one of nine problem states, with Alaska and several in the Deep South, that were required to submit all potential changes in election law to the Justice Department for approval to ensure they did not unfairly target minorities.

The Supreme Court eliminated that requirement in the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder, clearing the way for Maricopa County — where 40 percent of voters are minorities — to change its elections laws without federal oversight.

On election night March 22, the waits in Maricopa County — the state’s most populous — seemed interminable. In April, the Justice Department asked Maricopa County for data on the county’s decision to cut the number of polling places.

Secretary of State Michele Reagan, who oversees elections, is also taking heat for failing to ensure that 400,000 voters received election publicity pamphlets that spelled out the pros, cons and costs of two ballot measures scheduled to be considered in a special election May 17.

Tom Ryan, an attorney from Chandler, a leading opponent of an education measure on the ballot, Friday called for Reagan’s impeachment.

Brnovich too raised questions about her handling of the election. “When did the secretary of state know about this, and why did it take weeks in order to inform the public or (make) a complaint (to) get this information forward?” he said Thursday.

Reagan said through a spokesman that the problem with the pamphlets was uncovered three weeks ago and was the fault of the vendor, IBM.