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The Center for American Progress reports
As residents of Arizona's eighth congressional district cast ballots in a special election to replace former Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) in Congress, roughly 140,000 of them may be unaware they are eligible to vote because they did not receive the ID card the county is required to send them after they register.
According to the Arizona Republic, Maricopa County officials have not sent all voters the cards they can use to cast a ballot under Arizona's voter ID law because of an issue with the company used to print the materials. The paper reports that just 60,000 ID cards have been mailed to people who recently registered or changed their registration, while about 140,000 have not been sent.
[...] Arizona was one of the first states in the country to enact a non-photo voter ID law when a ballot measure was approved by voters[1] in November 2004. Under the law, the state must take steps to ensure that all eligible voters have an acceptable form of ID. According to the secretary of state's office[PDF], "a county recorder must issue a voter ID card to any new registrant or an existing registrant who updates his or her name, address, or political party preference".
But because of an error by the company used to print the ID cards, they have not been mailed out since December.
Although these citizens could provide other forms of ID at the polls, some voters told the Arizona Republic they're concerned that less informed voters may not realize they are registered without the card.
[...] During the presidential primary in March 2016, some Maricopa County voters waited in line for up to five hours to cast a ballot. The chaos led to an investigation by the Department of Justice and numerous lawsuits, including one filed by the Democratic National Committee.
Before the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Arizona was required to pre-clear any changes to its voting law with the DOJ.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @04:11PM (1 child)
That sounds gutted to me.
The reason for the pre-clearance on those issues is because trying to do something about it after the fact tends to render things moot. They're not going to set aside the results of an election because the state broke the law in how the election was run. And we're getting close to another census year, 20202, wherein the number of politicians elected for each party is going to make a massive impact on the elections for the next 10 years because most states don't have restrictions on how districting is done. A small number have bipartisan or nonpartisan committees that draw the lines, but most of the states the majority party gets to set up the committee and generally has it set up so that they gain maximum benefit.
We have similar problems with campaign laws. By the time there's an investigation and any enforcement action taken, the race is already over and the results are never overturned no matter how egregious the violations are. In most case, the groups breaking the laws get dismantled after the election, no matter what the results are, so there's not much in the way of punishment possible.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday April 30 2018, @07:55PM
Not sure if you actually read my comment in full. Congress has the ability to authorize preclearance again just by creating an updated list of states/areas based on current data. They have refused to do so. The VRA is still perfectly capable of being used in the manner you wish -- Congress is just failing to do so.