Arizona Voting Information
Dear Zonies:
Here's some information I found because it applies to my case, and I thought you might be interested too. Here's a table of interesting dates, from the AZ-SOS site:
| Presidential Preference | March 17, 2020 | February 18, 2020 |
| Primary | August 4, 2020 | July 6, 2020 | General | November 3, 2020 | October 5, 2020 |
Unlike the rest of Amerika, Arizona doesn't like those long long long campaigns, and so schedules its primaries reasonably close to the general elections. This is basically a good thing, and we wish the rest of you would get on board, heh. 
Here's another important date I got from Wikipedia:
Note our problem here: the Democratic Party convention is actually held before our primaries.
After that last, and totally fubar election, I (after 4 decades) abandoned the Democratic Party, as did so many others, and I did it between the "presidential preference" election and the party convention. My voter registration now says "No Party Declared" or some such thing. In that condition, I can go to the "primary" election polling place and, at that moment, choose any party for which I want to… well, in our case, to choose Electors.
In my head, and keeping mind that I am "No Party Declared", the narrative I create to describe the schedule is as follows:
- In March, voters choose the candidate of their party whom they want for president in the "presidential preference" election. Those results are taken to…
- The party convention held in July.
- In August, the voters choose the ELECTORS who will represent any party of their choosing at the infamous Electoral College.
- In November, the voters give some indication to the Secretary of State of Arizona about how those electors (already voted for) should be allocated. (OK, there are state laws about how this shall be done. For most states, it's "winner takes all" which isn't quite fair, but that's an argument for another time. Whatever.)
Remember last time? The Green Party didn't have their list of proposed electors ready at the deadline for the primary. So sure, they weren't needed after all, but a proper party needs to go through all the proper motions, anyway. Moving on…
Wherein I finally get to my point:
Note the difference in wording in items 1 and 3 above, regarding whom I may vote for, given that I am registered as "No Party Declared". In the "primary" election, I may specify (on that day, in my polling place) the party whose Electors I want to choose. But for the "presidential preference" election, I must have already chosen a Party before I will be allowed to vote for any candidate. Specifically, I must re-register as a Democrat if I want to vote for Bernie or Tulsi or (gods forbid) Biden.
So, and this is the important point, if you are in Arizona,
May the least harmful candidate win.
—yp.
Late update: Item 3 above is poorly stated. One cannot mix and match electors.
It should say: The voter selects a Party at the polling place, and then must choose from among the Electors proposed by that party.
Comments
Nice explanation.
That works somewhat like the US Constitution does. The details got nailed down after the world had already moved on.
Thanks!
And this is so true:
Living in a rural area of a fly-over state, I'm ambivalent about the urge—so prevalent nowadays—to abolish the Electoral College.
But yes, the point WRT elections is that unless everybody implements similar rules, voting and election procedures start to seem random. And we won't adopt similar rules without the FEDs' dipping their sticky fingers in, and the moment they do, the Libertarians will rise up and… Well, that won't be a pretty sight.
Meanwhile, we need to have our own local state rules clear so that we can have whatever influence we can.
“We may not be able to change the system, but we can make the system irrelevant in our lives and in the lives of those around us.”—John Beckett
Elections are totally bogus
IMO.
How can they hold their convention before the whole country has voted? How many other states will not have voted when they decide who won the primary? And will democrats once again let delegates and super delegates decide who wins? Remember Bernie won Virginia 44-32, but because of delegates Hillary was given the win. In what democratic society does that make sense?
BTW will the media do exit polling this time or will they decide that they don't want people to think the votes are being rigged? Again? Another thing. Will heavy democratic places have enough voting machines or will people be expected to stand in line all day? Will the close to a million people who have been kicked off the voting rolls be able to register in time to vote or will they have to jump through hoops? Any country that makes voting so difficult shouldn't be held up by the rest of the world as a free country.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Remember: Convention Delegates are not the same as Electors
In Arizona, the Party chooses the delegates, it's completely out of our hands. However, those delegates are "pledged" to support the winner of the "Presidential Preference" election held in
FebruaryMarch. Nothing to do with Electors. (Check your Constitution for the definition of "electors".)Actually, last time, I'm pretty sure the "preference" election went for Bernie, but you won't find that on any official tallies anywhere, because of those other irregularities not attributable to Arizona's weird election laws. [At least these laws about the dates.]
So, anyway, theoretically, Arizonans will have voted prior to the convention.
As to your other questions, I am not well-informed enough to answer. But i do have one note: regarding
you may be talking about one state? There are probably that many in Florida alone (former Fla resident here). There are many more in other states, too.
“We may not be able to change the system, but we can make the system irrelevant in our lives and in the lives of those around us.”—John Beckett
Oops
My bad..reading comprehension is hard sometimes....but yeah the million includes all of the cities and states that happened in.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
? For "all", I read "each"
I would include felons who have completed their sentences, and are still barred from voting, for life. Maybe I'm just taking the longer view…
Funny story here, about how silly the "former felon" part of this issue goes:
In my Florida town, our mayor was impeached in the late 90s because he wasn't a registered voter in our town (a requirement for office). He had lost his voting rights because of a felony marijuana conviction in the the early 70s.
The follow-up goes: he had an appointment to be "pardoned" with the governor (Jeb Bush, at the time), but missed it because of Hurricane Floyd, so he had to sit out the next election.
After his voting rights were reinstated, he was reelected about 6 or 7 times, because he was a really good mayor.
“We may not be able to change the system, but we can make the system irrelevant in our lives and in the lives of those around us.”—John Beckett
Clinton won the Arizona Primary in 2016
58% to 40% for Bernie. 235,697 - 163,400 on March 22, 2016. She got 47 delegates, Bernie got 35.
Worst of all, too many people who didn't like Hillary didn't make the effort to vote for Bernie.
No,
, she wasn't IN the Primary in Arizona. She won the Presidential Preference Election. Misinformation like this continues to confuse Arizonans. 49 states vote for Presidential candidates in the Primaries. Arizona does not. Please don't tell them, "oh, it's the same thing." It's not. You have to be registered in a party to vote for Presidential candidates, in the PPE, in Arizona. The primaries are 'open'. Arizonans can vote for your State Reps, Senators, Mayor, and dogcatcher, regardless of party, in the Primaries.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Arizonians can register to vote Dem then (or not)
. . . checking again and again that their registration is honored and recorded and they are not purged for some stupid reason.
Keep up the good work! It's hard for sure.
If Bernie doesn't win the nomination, I will probably just reregister as an independent in my state and never vote again for any candidate for any office. But that's just me. If it happens, I will essentially crawl under a rock as far as politics is concerned. Then again, Bernie might actually pull it off this time -- although Hillary 2.0 has emerged via Warren with her lying about Bernie's campaign (see Snoop's latest essay).
Yes, they *said* she won.
And they have all those very big vote counts and precise calculations of her "winning" percentage to back up their claim. And it all has nothing to do with our hackable electronic voting machines and fractional votes and all those other shenanigans we had last time.
And of course, none of those things are resolved, so they're free to do it all again.
What I saw was not a single person who voted for her, but crowds and crowds of Bernie supporters.
“We may not be able to change the system, but we can make the system irrelevant in our lives and in the lives of those around us.”—John Beckett
Excellent post, yellopig,
We worked pretty hard for Bernie here, the last time around. The hardest part of it was convincing people that they had to be registered in a party to vote in the PPE. "Oh, but the Primaries are 'open'!" Yes, that is right, but the Primaries don't include the Presidential candidates...etc, etc.
You have it exactly right...register with a party by the middle of next month, or you're out of luck. And then check it several times before you go to the polls, or you could be out of luck again.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Thanks!
I'm really glad I checked this. I haven't been paying as close attention to the rules this time.
“We may not be able to change the system, but we can make the system irrelevant in our lives and in the lives of those around us.”—John Beckett
Any of your from
AZ think the Dems would have a shot at winning the state in the fall?
Last time, Trump only won there by 90k votes. At the very least it looks like a state where Ds should devote some GOTV resources, esp re the Hispanic community. A more winnable red state than TX.
Those are crickets you hear now.
Yes, you're right, Democrats probably have a marginally better chance winning AZ than TX, but that margin isn't large. Of course a lot depends on who ultimately gets nominated.
Don't be fooled by the fact that one of our senators is a Democrat: she's a firm bipartisan Blue Dog. We managed to get her elected over that horrid McSally, and then the governor just appointed the horrid McSally to the senate anyway.
The GOTV for Bernie was the best I've ever seen, and he "lost", so what does that tell us?
“We may not be able to change the system, but we can make the system irrelevant in our lives and in the lives of those around us.”—John Beckett