In my job, I often get calls from the Federal Government's Department of Justice. Arizona, as a state, has to submit any legislative changes it makes which "affect voting" to the Feds for approval under the Voting Rights Act. I think I explained this before but Arizona is a "covered state" which means that we're under the microscope with regarding to voting rights because of past abuses and discrimination. It makes working as an elections officer particularly difficult. So....part of my job is to submit what are called preclearance submissions to the Federal Government. In these submissions you have to go into extreme detail about how many minorities and members of "language minority groups" (????) were involved in approving the change and how they could be affected by any change. I think I had to put in a 20 page letter describing a House Bill that allowed counties to print sample ballots on white paper with a large colored stripe denoting the party affiliation (red = republican, blue = dems, etc.) instead of the previous practice of having them print it entirely on colored paper. This was supposed to be a cost-saving measure for the counties but I sure blew a lot of money writing that thing up....
There has been a recent "crack down" on these approvals too. So...I get at least one call a week from the Feds asking about some submission or the other. I recently had to find out how many minorities were involved in coming up with the idea to have a Statewide Poll Worker Recruitment Campaign sponsored by the Secretary of State. After ten or so questions, I told the Federal guy that it was starting to seem like the Dept. of Justice didn't want us to recruit more poll workers. He didn't appreciate my observation (probably because it was true).
The funny part is about all this, and the main reason for this blurb, is that these guys in DC seem to have a very funny idea about what Arizona is like. They always talk to us like we're out at some Pony Express station unable to comprehend how they (from the big city) could speak to us on those little ringing things sitting on our desks. I've always thought that they believe we're all wearing cowboy boots, chewing tobacco, eating things with cactus in them and shootin' injuns out here. (Which everyone knows is purely a weekend activity in this state...but I can't vouch for New Mexico.)
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