Laurie Roberts

opinion columnist

There's just no way around it: Sorry, Helen Purcell, but you’ve got to go.

The woman in charge of Maricopa County elections appeared before the House Elections Committee on Monday to explain what went wrong last week in that debacle we call a presidential primary.

First, she tried to pass off the responsibility for explaining what happened to a lobbyist for the Arizona Association of Counties. But Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, chairwoman of the committee, wasn’t having it and demanded that Purcell answer questions.

That’s when things went from bad to uggggly.

Purcell said she didn’t know how the 60 locations for polling places were selected. “A team” within her office chose the spots.

Purcell conceded that no one in her office took into account whether the polling places would have been approved by the Department of Justice — in other words, whether the placement of the polling places might disenfranchise voters.

Purcell said polling places were large. Yet one pollworker testified that it was smallest room she’d ever worked in during her 20 years working elections.

Purcell said “to her knowledge” no polling places ran out of ballots. This, despite widespread reports that polling places ran out of ballots.

And Purcell blamed a lack of funding for what clearly, undeniably, unavoidably was a total foul up.

'We were trying to downsize'

“There was not sufficient money to pay us for a full-blown election, so we were trying to downsize,” she explained to the panel.

Never mind that Purcell got the same $1.25 per voter that she’s gotten for every other election. Never mind that every other county got $1.25 per voter and managed to actually hold an election in which voters could vote.

Never mind that that $1.25 per voter included funding for independents who couldn’t even vote in this election.

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Many in Monday’s overflow public hearing angrily accused Purcell of corruption. Having watched her for years, I don’t believe that Helen Purcell is corrupt.

But she was inexcusably inept, both on election day and six days later while trying to explain what happened on election day.

Purcell isn't the only one who messed up

“I made a giant mistake,” she said, at one point.

“And that’s an understatement,” Ugenti-Rita fired back.

Purcell isn’t the only one who made mistakes. There is also the Legislature, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the Motor Vehicle Division and the Secretary of State’s Office. More on that coming in a post later today.

But when it comes to screw ups, Purcell’s was industrial sized. From trying to go cheap at voters’ expense to failing to recognize that this election wasn’t like other elections.

Helen Purcell, who has held her office for 28 years, is generally a class act and a nice lady.

But class doesn’t count when people — including the elderly and disabled — are forced to wait five hours to vote. When even one voter is forced to walk away.

Nice doesn’t matter when people had to choose between their jobs and their right — their right — to vote.

Purcell knows she messed up.

“We made some horrendous mistakes, and I apologize for that,” she said. “I can’t go back and undo it.”

Which is precisely the problem. She can’t undo it.

But she can make absolutely sure that it never happens again.

She can resign.