got an email last night from a woman who waited five hours to vote in Arizona. Five hours.
We don’t know how many thousands of people didn’t get to cast their ballots yesterday in Arizona because they couldn’t afford to wait that long. Scenes on cable news last night showed hundreds of people in line at11:30pm in Phoenix – more than four hours after polls closed. Voting should not be this difficult.
One reason it is so hard to vote in Arizona is because the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. There were 70 percent fewer polling places this year than in 2012 in Phoenix’s county. They wouldn’t have been allowed to cut those polling places if the Voting Rights Act was still in tact.
These cuts meant that, in a county with more than 4 million residents, there were just 60 polling places. This is unacceptable, but it’s also not an isolated incident.