Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party To Sue Arizona For 5-Hour Voting Lines

[Gothmog]

The Clinton campaign is suing to protect voting rights in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. Add Arizona to that list http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/04/14/3769482/arizona-lawsuit-voting/

This Friday, a group of Maricopa County voters will sue the state of Arizona over the disastrous primary election in March that left them waiting up to five hours in the desert heat to cast a ballot. They will be supported in the case by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee, the Arizona Democratic Party, the president of the Navajo Nation, and the campaign of Ann Kirkpatrick, who is challenging Sen. John McCain for his seat in Congress.

“Arizonans were denied their constitutional right to vote because those who run the system weren’t prepared, and it can never happen again,” Kirkpatrick said in an e-mailed statement. “Today’s action is about representing every Arizona voter who stood in line for far too long or was forced to go home without casting a ballot.”

The case demands the U.S. District Court of Phoenix review why the county cut the number of available polling places from 200 to 60, leaving only one voting center for every 21,000 voters, and ensure there are adequate polls open for this November’s general election, which will have even higher voter turnout. Even in the lower-turnout March primary, some polling places ran out of ballots.....

The new lawsuit from the Democratic Party aims to remedy the problem before November, when the key swing state could help determine the fate of both the White House and the Senate. Democrats are also suing in four other swing states — Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina — over allegations of voter suppression against students, people of color, and the poor.

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz argued Thursday that policies in these states are a deliberate attempt by Republican officials to maintain their power. “They want nothing less than to disenfranchise voting groups who are inconvenient to them on Election Day,” she said. “That’s exactly what Arizona’s officials did when they closed polling locations and rejected thousands of provisional ballots, and it’s exactly what they’ll continue to do if left unchecked.”