Supreme Court’s Voting Right Act Debacle on Full Display in Arizona Primary

FEATURING ARI BERMAN – Arizona’s primary election earlier this week was a disastrous display of the 2013 Supreme Court decision to gut the Voting Rights Act. Voters were in line for as long as 5 hours to cast their ballots.

Maricopa County in particular, which is the most racially diverse county in Arizona, faced unacceptable barriers to voting after it cut down its number of polling places from 200 in 2012 to 60 this time. Some voters told press they eventually gave up and didn’t vote.

Changes made to voting rules in North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, and Virginia, also appeared to have impacted people’s right to vote.

Read Ari’s articles at www.thenation.com, www.ari-berman.com, and follow his work on Twitter @ariberman.

Ari Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation magazine and an Investigative Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute. His new book is called Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.