Recently in July 2018 the ASU Morrison Institute for Public Policy issued a report entitled “Arizona’s Voter Crisis”.
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.