United States: Protests hit Arizona over voter suppression

Protesters have demanded the reinstatement of the United States' Voting Rights Act of 1965, a complete count of provisional ballots in Arizona's March 22 presidential primaries and a public random recount of unsorted mail ballots in the state, Alternet.org said on March 28.

Fewer than a million Arizona residents turned out to vote in the Democratic and Republican presidential primary, Alternet.org said. More than 400,000 Democrats voted in a race won by Democrat establishment favourite Hillary Clinton.

Clinton's opponent, the self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, said this was a much lower voter turnout than expected and that the issues behind it need to be fixed for upcoming primaries.

Sanders called the reported wait times for voters in Arizona “a disgrace”, saying: “We got an email last night from a woman in Arizona who was waiting in line for five hours to vote.”

Sanders said “We do not know how many thousands of people who wanted to vote yesterday in Arizona did not vote. We don't know if they wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump or whoever … How many people simply walked away? Were they thousands, tens of thousands? I don't know.”

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