Itβs Tuesday. Youβre 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 donβt belong in a family newspaper. But some of the cleaner responses I can think of come as questions:
βWho (the hell) are you?β
βWho made you guardian of democracy?β
βWhat business of yours is my vote?β
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. Letβs hope my concern is exaggerated. But some ad hoc groups are taking it upon themselves to monitor polling places, responding to Donald Trumpβs argument that the election is being βrigged.β
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 letβs add that Iβm 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 donβt know what Iβd do, but Iβd be even angrier.
The problem isnβt 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.
Whatβs 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. Itβs 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 β 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 theyβre taking it upon themselves to monitor polling places.
The group has named βLa Razaβ 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 thatβs bothersome enough, but then you can imagine other, more frightful scenarios. For example, add guns to the mix.
Firearms arenβt permitted in polling places or within 75 feet, but outside that perimeter itβs a gray area. Hereβs the guidance Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan gave Tuesday:
βArizonans 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.β
These, of course, are very difficult lines to draw. The safest thing to do β in all the senses of the word safe β 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 donβt know it. The reason Arizona was for decades required to submit changes to its election practices for βpreclearance,β 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, Arizonaβs 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. Thereβs nothing wrong with that.
Theyβre to report any concerns to the polling place inspector or call the GOPβs hotline, but not confront anyone, Sifert said. Thatβs 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 supervisorsβ 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 Β© 4 of the internal revenue code, plans to raise about $175,000. Groups organized under that code donβt have to disclose their donors.
The group supporting Bronsonβs opponent, Kim DeMarco, has not filed anything with the county yet. But it appears that group will have to be disclosing its donors β 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, itβs 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.
βI think Tucson, Arizona, a majority Democrat and a university town, ought to have 24/7 progressive thinking to listen to,β 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 wasnβt. 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. Thatβs when Woodhouse and colleague David Wichner dug in and confirmed the story themselves, and thatβs 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.
