Mary Jo Pitzl, and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez

The Republic | azcentral.com

Maricopa County voters woke up with an election hangover Wednesday morning, and it wasn't pretty.

Complaints about waits in lines that topped five hours in some locations, a shortage of ballots and inadequate staffing at the county's 60 polling locations stoked anger and drew condemnation from Gov. Doug Ducey, lawmakers and national groups.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton asked U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to launch an investigation into what he called "a fiasco."

A petition asking the Obama administration to order the U.S. Justice Department to investigate "voter fraud" in Tuesday's election was 73 percent toward its goal of 100,000 signatures by late Wednesday.

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U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., urged people to contact his office with their complaints, which he said he will use to propose legislation to fix voting irregularities.

The chairman of the state House Elections Committee has set a 10 a.m. hearing for Monday to explore why Maricopa County provided only 60 polling places, leading to such long lines.

And average voters — or would-be voters — took to social media to express their anger and dismay.

Barnett Lotstein, now retired from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, called the whole episode voter suppression. Count him and wife among the suppressed: They gave up on voting after driving to two polling places in Phoenix in late afternoon, where they were told to expect a three-hour wait.

That wouldn't work for Lotstein, 74, who has a heart condition. "I couldn't stand for three hours," he said. "I was deprived of my vote by the people who put this together.

"If you make it hard to vote at the polls, that's voter suppression." Sure, he said, he could have asked for a mail-in ballot, but it's not for elections officials to tell him how to cast his ballot. Besides, he likes the whole in-person voting experience.

Natalie Hochhaus, 20, was hoping to experience that for herself as she prepared to vote for the first time. But after she and her mom, Isabel, waited 2 1/2 hours in a line at the Tempe Public Library that barely seemed to budge, they gave up. That was after circling another Tempe site on two repeated attempts, only to give up there because they couldn't find parking.

She said she felt cheated.

"I'm a student at Arizona State, I'm passionate about the issues, but I didn't get to exercise my right to vote," she said.

Stanton's letter to the Department of Justice said Phoenix, a city where minorities comprise the majority of the population, got a disproportionately small number of voting locations compared with more Anglo-dominated cities such as Fountain Hills, Paradise Valley and Peoria.

For example, Phoenix had one polling place per 108,000 voters; Fountain Hills had one for every 22,500 voters.

"Yesterday's fiasco demonstrates the urgent need for an independent and thorough law-enforcement investigation to safeguard one of the most sacred rights we have as citizens," he wrote to Lynch.

Ducey called Tuesday's long lines "unacceptable" and laid the blame on elections officials. Ducey signed the state budget last year that cut the funding counties needed to conduct the election, over the protests of county officials.

The governor also called for opening the presidential primary to all voters, a factor that added to the confusion as independents showed up, only to have to argue to get a ballot. Many were given provisional ballots since they weren’t registered with a party; others said they were discouraged from getting a ballot.

"That's just wrong," the governor said in a statement. "If people want to take the time to vote they should be able to, and their vote should be counted."

Ducey, who voted by mail, said elections officials must evaluate what went wrong and ensure it doesn't happen again — something Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell has said will happen.

Ducey's comments are particularly stinging as the May 17 special statewide election looms. That ballot will ask voters to approve Proposition 123, the education-funding settlement Ducey has championed, as well as pension reform for the public-safety system. On Wednesday, Purcell said they will increase the number of polling sites, abandoning earlier plans to run with 62 polling sites in May.

On Wednesday morning, about two dozen angry voters and community leaders gathered outside the county elections offices to call for Purcell to resign. Others called for a “re-vote.”

Rep. Reginald Bolding, D-Phoenix, said he’s concerned about voter disenfranchisement and wondered whether it was deliberate, given the office's history of election errors that enrage voters.

"We also have bills at the state Legislature that makes it a felony to help individuals vote," he said. "You would hope that it’s not deliberate, but when you look at everything that’s been introduced, it’s hard to believe it’s not a deliberate effort."

Alessandra Soler, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, said the organization is reviewing voter complaints, which numbered 50 by mid-morning.

“There were some reports that in some Latino districts, there were no polling places," she said.

That could have been an issue if Arizona were still under the provisions of the Voting Rights Act that calls for pre-clearance of elections to ensure minorities are not disenfranchised. The U.S. Supreme Court last year removed those provisions.

State Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Phoenix, spent most of election day at the Maryvale polling site. After watching the long lines and parking confusion, he said the idea of sticking with the same poll plan for May is crazy.

"We've really got to rethink this strategy," he said, calling the idea of 60 sites for the May election "entirely inappropriate."

Quezada is a member of the Senate's government and judiciary committees, which handle many election-related issues.

At the Salvation Army polling place in downtown Phoenix, voters were in line as midnight approached.

"Helen Purcell will get a call from me," said Gail Smith, 45. The Maricopa County Recorder's office is in charge of running elections.

Other voters chimed in, saying they would advise her office to "not be so cheap," as Gilbert Mora put it as he waited in line around 10:50 p.m.

"Really, Helen?" said Mary Driessen, who stopped at the downtown site on her way home from a business trip to Tucson. She figured she didn't have time to drive to a polling place closer to her home in Anthem, at the far northern edge of the Valley. She arrived 12 minutes before the line closed at 7 p.m.; she cast her ballot at 11:45 p.m. — the 2,000th voter at that site.

"This has been nuts," Driessen said of the long lines.

The upside, she said, was the generous and genial attitude of the people in line, as well as volunteers who brought pizza, Easter candy, water and played music for the waiting voters.

But a five-hour wait, she said, is "nuts, nuts, nuts."

Follow the reporter on Twitter @yvonnewingett and reach her at yvonne.wingett@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4712.