Is there a voter crisis in Arizona?

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.

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ASU’s Morrison Institute pushes Top Two Primary with study on “independent” voters

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtlHcl8WjCA?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360]
The inimitable Jay Smooth explains, via rapper T-Pain and Sean Hannity, why you can’t possibly know more about politics than people who pay attention if you don’t pay attention.

In case the embedded video doesn’t play.

ASU’s Morrison Institute issued a study of the elusive “independent voters” in Arizona. It was commissioned by the Clean Elections Commission and was pretty comprehensive (albeit with what I consider to be some gaps that I’ll get to in a bit) in that it included several focus groups and surveys and it asked what I believe is the pertinent question about this group of voters:

Are independent voters truly an untapped resource that could determine elections, aiding in the transformation of Arizona from a conservative “red state” into a “purple” moderate state or even more progressive “blue state?” Or, with no organization and a track record of poor turnout in both primary and general elections, are independents a much-ado-about-nothing “party” of non-participants?

I’m going with the latter, and not just based on my own frustrating personal experience with these voters. Oh no, thanks to this study we now have empirical evidence to go on. They not only don’t vote:

We know actual voter turnout is significantly lower than survey respondents indicate because voters tend to overstate their voting behavior – primarily because it is socially unacceptable to admit to not voting.

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