Local metal band releases song protesting Maricopa County voting debacle
Mar 29, 2016, 4:34 PM | Updated: 6:49 pm
(Photo by Miguel Otarola/Cronkite News)
(Photo by Miguel Otarola/Cronkite News)
PHOENIX — A Phoenix metal band channeled Maricopa County residents’ frustration over long voting lines and systematic failure during last Tuesday’s presidential preference election in a head-banging track.
The experimental thrash metal duo Partners in Crime relayed aggravation felt by the thousands of voters affected by five-hour lines. The band released the song “Maricopa Do It Over” on Tuesday. (WARNING: SONG CONTAINS FOUL LANGUAGE).
Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell partially blamed for the wait times, but later changed her tune.
Tensions escalated in the days following the primary election. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton requested a federal investigation into the wait lines in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Stanton alleged that, by cutting down the number of polling places, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office unfairly made minorities wait longer to vote.
“The ratios were far more favorably in predominantly Anglo communities: In Cave Creek/Carefree, there was one polling location for 8,500 residents; in Paradise Valley, one for every 13,00 residents; in Fountain Hills, one for 22,500 residents; and in Peoria, one for every 54,000 residents,” the letter read.
“In Phoenix, a majority-minority city, county officials allocated one polling location for every 108,000 residents.”
On March 28, dozens of voters and activists vented their anger at a state House hearing and later in the chamber gallery where a protester was hauled out in handcuffs by state police.
At the hearing, speaker Patrick Seifter and others called on Purcell to resign.
“You made sure that many people had to choose between voting and keeping their jobs,” Seifter said of the long waits at polls.
“I can’t go back and undo it. I wish I could but I cannot,” Purcell said during the hearing. “I made a giant mistake.”
“And that’s an understatement,” replied Republican Michelle Ugenti-Rita, who chairs the elections committee.
KTAR’s Corbin Carson and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
