Elections Officials Blasted for Arizona Primary Debacle

By Lorin McLain

Now that the haze of Arizona’s presidential preference election has lifted, elections officials are catching heat for the hours-long wait thousands of voters endured to cast their ballots. Eager supporters of both parties were still waiting as polls closed at locations all over Phoenix on Tuesday night. Some waits were reported as long as five hours. One site also reported running out of ballots, while elections officials rushed to get more.

So what was the problem in Arizona? Well, for starters, the state decided to save some money and cut down on polling places. Maricopa County downsized to 60 polling places from the 200 used during the 2012 presidential primary. Elections officials say the move was because of fewer people going to polls and more people casting ballots by mail. It turned out their prediction couldn’t have been more wrong. While Maricopa officials say they picked polling locations by looking at sites with high mail-in ballot returns, they didn’t expect a turnout of registered voters estimated to be at least 60 percent. Other counties that provided more polling places (including Pima County) didn’t report problems with long lines.

The morning after, Maricopa County recorder Helen Purcell addressed county supervisors and took blame for the poll debacle. Purcell first, however, blamed long lines on independents demanding to cast provisional ballots who were unaware of party rules. According to current rules, provisional ballots don’t count in this primary unless you are a registered voter with the Republican, Democrat, or Green Party. All Maricopa County supervisors approved the plan for 60 polling locations.

Governor Doug Ducey on Wednesday blamed elections officials and said they need to evaluate what went wrong to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Meanwhile, many people supporting Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders think they got the raw end of the deal. Arizona called the election for Hillary Clinton half an hour after polls closed, while thousands of voters were still waiting in poll lines.

The final tally on Wednesday had Clinton garnering 235,667 votes, while 163,368 voted for Sanders. GOP frontrunner Donald Trump won Arizona by a sizeable margin in a winner-take-all delegate grab, taking 47-percent of the vote compared to 25 percent that went to Ted Cruz, and 10 percent to John Kasich.