Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, and Richard Ruelas

The Republic | azcentral.com

The Board of Supervisors in February approved a plan to reduce the number of polling sites

The board will meet Wednesday to canvass the official results of the election

The Sanders campaign says the candidate could receive more delegates if more provisionals are counted

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors certified results of last week's presidential preference election, and while board members braced for protests like those that rocked a House hearing Monday, just 11 people voiced frustration about how the election was handled.

Most of the 200 seats in the board's auditorium were empty. After about three hours, the board accepted the election results on a 4-1 vote, with Supervisor Steve Gallardo, the board's lone Democrat, dissenting.

After the vote, an attorney for Democrat Bernie Sanders' campaign said the candidate is considering challenging the results. The attorney, Chris Sautter, contended some provisional ballots that were not counted because they were deemed by elections officials to be cast by independents, could boost Sanders' Arizona delegate count.

Sanders' decision would likely come after the secretary of state certifies the statewide election results.

Seventy-five of Arizona’s 85 Democratic National Convention delegates will be proportionally distributed based on the statewide vote and the vote in each of the state’s nine congressional districts.

The other 10 “superdelegates” are controlled by party leaders and elected officials.​

Sanders' campaign did not want county officials to certify the results until "there's a complete audit" to account for votes that potentially should have been counted.

"What's at stake, yes, are delegates" he said. "Obviously the outcome of the election of the primary isn't going to be changed, but delegate counts could be changed."

Prior to Sanders' comments, county Recorder Helen Purcell, who oversaw the election, and county Election Director Karen Osborne explained to the board in detail the calculations that went into the decision to reduce the number of polling sites to 60 -- from 200 in 2012 -- and where to locate them. The decision, which began last spring, reflected past voter turnout, the large number of requests for early ballots, and a reduction of election funding from the state. The Board of Supervisors approved the 60-site plan in February.

Voters critical of polling decisions

Angry voters, who had to wait in long lines because of too few polling locations, have criticized the amount of time it took for provisional ballots to be cast and confusion over who was allowed to vote. Some have said they were deprived of their right to vote.

Only Republicans, Democrats and Green party members are allowed to vote in the state's presidential preference election. Independents must register with one of those parties to vote in a preference election.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won the state's Democratic and Republican elections, respectively.

Purcell and Osborne said their decisions were not malicious and were not intended to suppress anyone's vote.

Purcell, a Republican, took the board through the math behind the reduction in polling places, showing that her office expected 1,500 voters at each polling site. Each polling place was staffed with 13 to 15 workers, she said.

The decisions had "nothing, absolutely nothing" to do about trying to "decrease the turnout of any group" or any party registration, said Osborne, who is a Democrat.

She later added she did not intentionally provide fewer polling locations for minorities. "I did not try to suppress the vote," she said.

Leaders take on election 'fiasco'

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton has asked U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate what he called an election "fiasco." On Monday, outraged voters took turns screaming and chastising county and state elections officials at a three-hour Elections Committee hearing at the state Capitol.

That meeting was intended to get to the root of the decision to cut the number of polling sites, but it devolved into screaming matches between lawmakers and voters. At that hearing, many speakers alleged county and state election officials deliberately made it more difficult for minorities and Sanders supporters to cast their vote.

Although the county no longer must submit its polling locations to the U.S. Department of Justice for approval, Osborne said county election officials use the same criteria in selecting the polling locations. For example, she said, polling places must be accessible for disabled voters and must have bilingual poll workers.

Gallardo, who spoke more than the Republican supervisors, repeatedly laid blame with the state Legislature, saying lawmakers have underfunded county election functions and spent too few dollars educating voters about who can vote. He added that independents should be allowed to vote in presidential preference elections, a notion Gov. Doug Ducey has said he supports.

"The Legislature needs to take responsibility and fund these elections," Gallardo said.

Leonard Clark of Phoenix said Purcell and Osborne should resign. “Thirty years is a long time,” he said, referencing Purcell's time in office.

Channel Powe said the county should have anticipated the turnout. “We cannot continue to implement the mediocre plans that disenfranchise the voters,” Powe said. She suggested improvements, including extending the possible days to cast a ballot and making public transportation free on election day.

Powe noted officials discussed the cost of the election. “We have to ask ourselves: How important is democracy? How important are elections?"

County: Turnout was more than 50 percent

According to Maricopa County, just over 50 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the presidential preference election.

There were 621,976 total ballots cast; the county has 1.2 million registered voters.

About 53 percent of registered Republicans turned out to vote; about 47 percent of registered Democrats and nearly 17 percent of Green Party members cast ballots.

The overwhelming majority of voters, 533,772, cast their votes early, while 88,1187 voted on election day. There were 24,630 provisional ballots cast. Of those, 4,631 were verified and counted by elections officials and another 19,999 were verified but not counted because people were not properly registered.

Problematic provisional ballots

The provisional ballots have been at the center of the controversy over the voting debacle.

Last week, county officials said voters across Arizona could have lost their party affiliation and thus been forced to cast provisional ballots because of errors at the state Motor Vehicle Division.

Indeed, a widespread complaint on election day was that voters were not registered with a party and ineligible to vote in the closed primary. Many of these voters, from both the Democratic and Republican parties, claimed decades of party participation.

But on Tuesday, state transportation officials said they found just one error among eight potentially problematic voter registration documents sent to them by county officials.

State officials went through each of the eight forms to determine the accuracy of data keyed in by MVD clerks from the original paper forms. When voters visit MVD to renew or apply for driver’s licenses, the form gives them an opportunity to register or re-register to vote and update their party affiliation.

The MVD clerk then reviews that information and keys it into a state system, an opportunity for human error. That information contained on the form, as well as images of the forms, are transmitted to the secretary of state, who then transmits the information to county recorders.

In reviewing the eight forms, state officials determined just one had been entered inaccurately. The voter intended to be registered as a Democrat, but the clerk wrote the word “BED” in the electronic state system. County recorder spokeswoman Elizabeth Bartholomew said that vote was ultimately counted after officials verified the voters' past registration as Democrat.

Tim Tait, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said the "narrative that we're the problem -- that's just not the case."

In approving the results, County Supervisor Steve Chucri praised Purcell and Osborne for their handling of the post-election fallout. Supervisor Denny Barney also praised the longtime county officials, saying the public can call the board "stupid" for deciding the cut the number of polling places, but it could not call it "dishonest."