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Greg Stanton
asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate a decision
by Maricopa County officials to slash the number of polling
locations in Arizona's most populous county and leave
minority-heavy areas with seemingly fewer sites.
The Democratic mayor called the vote "a fiasco" after voters had
to wait in line for several hours on Tuesday to cast their
ballots. Donald Trump won the state's Republican contest, while
Hillary Clinton won on the Democratic side.
"Because of the unacceptably disparate distribution of polling
locations, I respectfully request the U.S. Department of Justice
investigate what took place [...] to ensure all voters are
treated equally," Stanton said in the letter to Attorney General
Loretta Lynch.
He said it was the latest in a series of moves by county and
state officials that had created "a culture of voter
disenfranchisement."
Complaints of long waits at the polls – some as long as five
hours - were common, with hundreds of voters still trying to
vote long after the polls closed. There also were reports of
polling stations running out of ballots.
The county's top election official took the blame on Wednesday
for making the cost-cutting decision to cut the number of
polling sites to 60, compared with the 200 in 2012.
County Recorder Helen Purcell said she underestimated the number
of people who would vote, in part citing the rise in mail-in
ballots.
"If we had to do it all over again, we would have done it
differently, but I take the blame for that," Purcell told the
county Board of Supervisors. "We were not prepared, that was our
fault."
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey a Republican, said the long lines
were unacceptable and called on election officials to evaluate
what went wrong and what could be done to prevent a repeat.
(Reporting by David Schwartz; Editing by Curtis Skinner and
Peter Cooney)
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