We won the midterms. I’m sure many readers shared the sense of visceral relief when it became clear that we at least had the House, that the slide to authoritarianism could be stopped. And then the joy that Krysten Sinema and Katie Hobbs won key statewide victories, the validation of knocking on one more door, writing one more postcard. A crisis situation has the benefit of clarity, that strength of fighting for the very survival of our democracy. Similarly, a clear enemy, someone so horrible or just plain mean that fighting them is a no-brainer, is oddly relaxing. But fighting, even winning, doesn’t always solve the problems — or even address the weaknesses that enemy was exploiting.
Fighting the wave of outright racism, voter suppression, possible cheating and fearmongering in the midterm elections definitely felt like a crisis to me, and walking precincts and talking to voters was a satisfying way to deal with it. Some things those voters said, though, reminded me that there’s more to the story.
A Mexican man in south Tucson told me that though he voted for Democrats, he was for a wall. One of my writing volunteers in El Paso told me that although everyone hated the child separations and despised the tent cities, they also felt strongly about waiting your turn and resented some of the asylum seekers. Another Democrat refused to support our candidate for Governor, not because he was opposed to the wall but because the voter thought he didn’t communicate a clear alternative solution. There was a sense among some voters of yes, they are awful, but what exactly are we going to do? What is the plan?
Is there a voter crisis in Arizona?
Here’s the report funded by the Citizens Clean Election Commission (CCEC) and on their website:
https://storageccec.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/public/docs/312-Voter-Crisis-Report-FINAL3.pdf
I attended a recent Tucson town hall on October 24 hosted by these 2 entities in which Joseph Garcia of ASU (director of communication & impact/co-author of the report) and Tom Collins E.D. of CCEC reported that 2.1 million or 45% of Arizona’s “potential voters” in 2016 (General) didn’t choose to exercise their fundamental right to vote. They reported on the nationwide trend in erosion of voter participation & on groups which aren’t voting in high numbers: youth, less educated, and Latinos. Moreover, Independents have a lower voter turnout due to not voting in primaries (don’t feel that they belong to either party or don’t know they can vote in the primaries by requesting a party ballot), and also don’t feel part of the electoral process.
In August 2018, the voter turnout statewide (of registered voters) for the Arizona Primary was: 33.26%
In the Arizona Mid-term General Election 2018 the voter turnout statewide was: 64.33%. And higher in Pima County: 70.55%
So the big question in the report was “Why Don’t More People vote?” (see page 15). There are a myriad of answers including “too busy” “out of town”, etc. but a main reason seems to be lack of information on the candidates and voting process. So that means better ways to reach voters needs to occur, along with more information. We here at Blog for Arizona do our best in that regard.
Local reporters after the recent elections were saying that negative campaigning suppresses the vote, or backfires against candidates doing negative campaigning.
Continue reading →
Share this:
Like this:
2 Comments
Posted in Carolyn Classen, Commentary, Community, Elections
Tagged Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission, Arizona's Voter Crisis, ASU Morrison Institute for Public Policiy, Billy Kovacs, David Garcia, January Contreras, LD 28 State Senate, PCC District 5, voter registration, voter suppression, Why don't more people vote?