What a relief it was last week that Arizonaโs latest election scandal did not happen in Pima County.
For once, Maricopa County officials spent the days after the election explaining their steps and missteps.
It was the Arizona secretary of state and the Maricopa County recorder who were grilled by angry citizens standing just a few feet away during a hearing at the Capitol Monday. Not officials from Pima County or Tucson.
A relief, yes, but we should stash away any satisfaction we might feel. It could have been us. The governing ideology caused the difficult situation in which bad decisions were made, and it is still running the state. Thanks to Arizonaโs belief in government on the cheap, the Fiasco in Phoenix might well have been the Trouble in Tucson.
Just look back a year ago to April 10. County officials were puzzling over how to run this yearโs presidential preference election. One of the options was to go down from 124 planned polling places to 30 voting centers in Pima County.
โThe cost differential between 30 voting centers and operating 124 polling locations is $100,000,โ County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry wrote in a memo to the Board of Supervisors. โHence, it is likely we will conduct the 2016 PPE using 124 polling locations.โ
The Pima County Board of Supervisors didnโt make its decision till January, but it opted to spend a little more money and be sure to have enough polling places. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors made the opposite choice.
Elections Director Karen Osborne told the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in February, when that board was finally getting around to approving its process for the presidential preference election, that cost was a top concern. Thatโs why the county decided to set up 60 voting centers around the county, where anyone could vote, instead of more than 200 precinct polling places.
โWe have had, at your direction, to try and keep the (presidential) preference election as cheap as humans can do it,โ she said. โWe have tried to do our best to bring you an election we can afford.โ
The result, of course, was people waiting up to five hours in line to vote, and some not being able to vote at all.
Theories have abounded that last weekโs long lines in Maricopa County were an expression of Arizonaโs efforts at โvoter suppression.โ Depending on who was talking, either Democrat Bernie Sanders or Republican Donald Trump were the intended victims.
Itโs true Arizonaโs voters and Legislature have been gradually making it more difficult for some to cast a ballot. The first notable step this direction was when we voted to require that voters show ID before they cast a ballot. The most recent was when the Legislature voted this year to make it a felony for most people to deliver a mail-in ballot for another person.
But last weekโs problems have a different root, one I like to call AZsterity, the Grand Canyon Stateโs version of austerity. Itโs our penchant to cut spending till disaster strikes, then scramble to address the crisis weโve created. Look at our former Child Protective Services agency and our public school system for two examples.
The state has long ordered counties to carry out presidential preference elections but promised only to reimburse them at the rate of $1.25 per registered voter. That hasnโt covered costs.
โThe counties have been subsidizing our elections for years,โ Pima Countyโs longtime recorder, F. Ann Rodriguez, told me. โThe state puts all the rules and gives the funding but they donโt give you enough to do what they are telling you to do.โ
That was supposed to change this year. In 2012, the Legislature passed a bill that required the state to reimburse the counties for all their presidential-preference costs. But when the state budget was passed a year ago, it did not include the required funding. Instead it included language reverting to the $1.25-per-voter plan.
This was not true of this yearโs Prop. 123 special election, a priority of the governor and legislative leaders that takes place in May. When the Legislature sent the school-funding plan to the governor in October, it included funding to run the election.
A bill, HB 2567, is being considered that would cover the countiesโ costs for handling of this yearโs presidential-preference election. But the bill also contains language eliminating the stateโs involvement with running presidential preference elections. The reimbursement should be non-controversial, but the latter change is rightly subject to much debate.
Our current system, in which the state pays for the election but only registered party members can vote, is obsolete because it requires the third of Arizona voters who are not registered members of a party to pay for the elections. The question is whether to hand off responsibility for selecting candidates to the parties.
The tendency among Republicans has been to shed responsibility for the whole thing and let the parties set up caucuses or some other selection process. But Gov. Doug Ducey surprisingly came out last week in favor of allowing independents to vote in these elections.
That would pretty much obligate the state to pay for future presidential-preference elections, because you canโt ask the parties to run a selection process that non-members vote in.
In my view, Duceyโs preferred option is the best of two tough choices: Party-run elections that will probably limit participation because of a need for the parties to minimize spending, or state- and county-run elections that increase participation but cost the taxpayers.
The $9 million that the counties estimate this yearโs election cost is a small price to pay for well-run, highly participatory presidential-preference elections โ even if the cost must be a bit higher to ensure Maricopa voters get to vote.
It would also be a welcome turn away from the unrealistic expectations of government on the cheap.
