'A Recipe for Disaster': Rights Advocates Fear Intimidation at Polls from Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Voting rights defenders in Arizona are expressing fear and concern that right-wing Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was found in contempt of court in May and again last month for failing to stop his practice of racial profiling and targeting of Hispanic people in “immigration patrols,” will intimidate voters at the polls on Tuesday.

“Arpaio’s deputies […] consistently treat voters differently based on the color of their skin, so why would they do any differently on election day, especially given that their boss is running for re-election?”
—Samantha Pstross,
Arizona Commission for Election Accountability

Those fears arose after Arpaio, who is up for re-election and faces a strong challenge from Democratic candidate Paul Penzone, instructed election recorder Helen Purcell to have poll workers call his office directly in case of a “non-life threatening emergency” on Election Day, the Guardian reports, and also told local principals whose schools were functioning as polling places that Arpaio’s deputies would be “stationed around the valley for easy dispatch should there be any need for an officer.”

“The presence of Arpaio’s deputies would be intimidation,” Samantha Pstross, president of the Arizona Commission for Election Accountability, a coalition of non-partisan voting rights groups, told the Guardian. “They consistently treat voters differently based on the color of their skin, so why would they do any differently on election day, especially given that their boss is running for re-election?”

“This is a recipe for disaster,” Pstross said.

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The instruction for poll workers to have an Arpaio deputy deployed in case of emergency does indeed appear unusual, as a recent poll worker guide for another well-populated county in Arizona instead directs workers to simply call 911—and makes no mention of the local sheriff.

And at least one Maricopa County official has responded to Arpaio’s comments by writing to Purcell “asking her to reconsider her decision to call on sheriff’s deputies,” the Guardian reports:

Indeed, Arpaio “is hated and feared by the Latino community here,” Pstross told the Guardian. “Especially hated, which is why the very presence of a sheriff’s deputy in a high-Latino population neighborhood will cause problems on election day.”