Itâs Tuesday. Youâre about to vote at a Southern Arizona polling place. A random person comes up and starts asking you friendly questions that turn into more pointed inquiries about your eligibility.
How do you respond?
The answers that come first to my mind donât belong in a family newspaper. But some of the cleaner responses I can think of come as questions:
âWho (the hell) are you?â
âWho made you guardian of democracy?â
âWhat business of yours is my vote?â
Or, of course, you can choose what is probably the smartest path: Ignore the person, walk in and do your talking by voting.
As this nightmarish election season creeps toward its conclusion, Election Day could turn into an ugly final chapter. Letâs hope my concern is exaggerated. But some ad hoc groups are taking it upon themselves to monitor polling places, responding to Donald Trumpâs argument that the election is being ârigged.â
I have enough of a temper that if some random stranger began questioning my right to vote, I would certainly get angry but I probably could walk away. Then I imagine myself to be a Mexican-American, and letâs add that Iâm a military veteran, or an elderly African-American who was denied the vote until the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
If I were one of those people and people were questioning my right to vote, I donât know what Iâd do, but Iâd be even angrier.
The problem isnât so much the presumption that there is a potential for voter fraud. In truth, that potential exits, though the likelihood of fraud on a scale that affects the outcome of a presidential election is small.
Whatâs so concerning is the presumption of some people that they are the upstanding Americans who have the right not only to vote but to divine who else has the right to vote, and to act on those intuitions. Itâs the height of presumptuousness.
The Oath Keepers are among these self-appointed experts. They are a group of current and former law-enforcement and military members â state Rep. Mark Finchem has been a proud member. Usually they have worried about FEMA camps, the New World Order and other conspiracy theories, but this year theyâre taking it upon themselves to monitor polling places.
The group has named âLa Razaâ and other groups as the likely instigators of Election Day violence that would allow President Obama to seize emergency powers. The irony, of course, is that paranoiacs like these are the most likely people to cause Election Day chaos.
All thatâs bothersome enough, but then you can imagine other, more frightful scenarios. For example, add guns to the mix.
Firearms arenât permitted in polling places or within 75 feet, but outside that perimeter itâs a gray area. Hereâs the guidance Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan gave Tuesday:
âArizonans have a legal right to carry, but the presence of a firearm in the context of voting could potentially intimidate voters. For example, carrying a weapon despite being outside a polling place is one thing, but carrying a weapon because there is a polling place may cross the line. Additionally, any aggressive or ostentatious display of a weapon will almost certainly constitute an act of intimidation.â
These, of course, are very difficult lines to draw. The safest thing to do â in all the senses of the word safe â is not to carry a gun anywhere near a polling place.
But beyond that, people who would consider being ad hoc, independent poll monitors need to understand they are extending an ugly, discriminatory history, even if they donât know it. The reason Arizona was for decades required to submit changes to its election practices for âpreclearance,â under the Voting Rights Act, is that we had a history of keeping people, especially Mexican-Americans and American Indians, from voting.
William Rehnquist infamously was accused of trying to harass and intimidate minority voters in the Phoenix area, as part of a GOP effort, in the early 1960s. That was before he became a U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1971 and chief justice in 1986.
This year, Arizonaâs GOP effort is focusing entirely on having credentialed election observers inside the polling places, as members of other parties do, party spokesman Tim Sifert told me Thursday. Thereâs nothing wrong with that.
Theyâre to report any concerns to the polling place inspector or call the GOPâs hotline, but not confront anyone, Sifert said. Thatâs good.
If anyone follows voters outside, or takes pictures or video of voters in parking lots, they are verging on voter intimidation and embracing an ugly history that should be left behind.
Dark money emerges
A tiny glimpse into the spending of dark money on the Pima County supervisorsâ races is coming into view.
Our Southern Arizona, the group formed by land investor Don Diamond and friends to support Democrat Sharon Bronson and oppose her Republican adversaries, has filed two disclosures with Pima County. They say that by Oct. 27, the group had spent about $59,500 on signs, mailings, websites and advertising.
Diamond told me last week the group, organized under section 501 Š 4 of the internal revenue code, plans to raise about $175,000. Groups organized under that code donât have to disclose their donors.
The group supporting Bronsonâs opponent, Kim DeMarco, has not filed anything with the county yet. But it appears that group will have to be disclosing its donors â it is organized under a different section of the internal revenue code, 527. Those groups must disclose donors.
In any case, both groups must file their last pre-election financial documents with the county on Friday.
Progressive
radio returns
You just knew John C. Scott would be back.
Now, though, itâs with an army of progressive talkers. Scott, the veteran political talk-show host, is returning to the air on KEVT, 1210 AM. His show airs from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., but he will be surrounded around the clock by other left-sided, syndicated talk-show hosts: Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, Alan Colmes and Leslie Marshall.
âI think Tucson, Arizona, a majority Democrat and a university town, ought to have 24/7 progressive thinking to listen to,â Scott said.
He last had a show on KVOI, 1030 AM, but that ended acrimoniously in 2013. Scott said he is being backed by prominent Democrats in the effort to get the station, which went off the air in February, back up.
It could be a hard sell, though. Even in politically liberal towns, conservative talk-radio has had good luck flourishing in a way that progressive talk rarely does.
Raytheon disclosures
After the Star broke the news last week that Raytheon Missile Systems is the company considering putting almost 2,000 jobs here, people asked me why the story broke now, just before the election. The same day the story ran, I wrote a column about how Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller voted against all the economic-development initiatives that are attracting Raytheon and others here.
I can see why people thought the story was a convenient pre-election plant, but it wasnât. After my colleague Murphy Woodhouse reported last month the number of companies considering expanding or locating here, I poked around and found out from someone in the know that the biggest of the companies was Raytheon.
Then, early last week, I confirmed that with another person in the know. When I told my boss I planned to report that in my column about Miller, she said we needed to have a news story. Thatâs when Woodhouse and colleague David Wichner dug in and confirmed the story themselves, and thatâs how the story and column ended up running the same day.
Although the story may be relevant to the election, no one planted the idea. It just came up through the day-to-day work of reporting in the Old Pueblo.
