Why no outcry over this election?
Nobody knew election intricacies like Helen Purcell.
The veteran Maricopa County elections chief felt the public’s wrath after fewer polling places caused long lines — and chaos — during the 2016 Arizona presidential primary.
Voters were furious. Latinos – myself included — accused her of deliberately disenfranchising minorities because she left large Latino-majority areas with few polling places.
Purcell, a Republican, deservedly lost her job over the fiasco. That’s why I’m so puzzled about the tepid public reaction to election-day mistakes made by her successor, Democrat Adrian Fontes.
There’s a stark contrast in how they handled these blunders, which are inevitable when changing computer software, equipment or any other fundamentals that spell a major overhaul.
Purcell promptly owned her mistakes and kept talking to reporters. Fontes promptly blamed a private contractor, sort of took responsibility and then disappeared from public view for a week – yes, a whole week without hearing from him.
Then, Fontes on Tuesday finally broke his silence — through Facebook of all places, as if every county resident would be cued on social media for his explanation about the Aug. 28 voting problems that impacted 95 precincts and tens of thousands of voters.
“We made some judgment calls that were not in the best interest,” Fontes said on the Facebook video Tuesday and reported by TheArizona Republic.
“Whether it was in our control or not, it happened.”
In the video, Fontes sort of apologized over some polling locations not being ready by 6 a.m. as required by law.
Let me get this straight. Fontes breaks state law, goes missing in action for a week and there is no public outcry?
One explanation for the tepid public reaction could be the context and magnitude of voting problems. It’s true that a lot more people voted in the presidential primary in March 2016 than in this August election, so a lot more folks were impacted.
Fontes’ mistakes may not have been as widespread, but his handling of them as the county’s top elections chief should matter greatly.
Mistakes may be inevitable, but we expect elected officials to promptly acknowledge them and tell the public how they’ll get fixed. Fontes did none of that.
I get that Fontes is playing it cool, saying he didn’t talk to the media because he wanted to get correct answers and not merely chasing headlines news.
Except that he’s relying on the media to disseminate his message. Unless he truly believes that every county resident is going to turn to his Facebook page and read his yet-to-be released report.
We should all be outraged with Fontes going dark for a week. We expect elected public officials to face us — the public — when things go wrong.
So why is he getting an easy pass? There is nothing logical about Fontes going MIA for a week. There is nothing logical about his hiding from the press.
It’s not logical for Fontes to merely dump a report on residents to find out what went wrong on Aug. 28 and, most importantly, how he and his office will avoid similar or other problems in the November general election.
Is it really going to take another widespread election chaos to demand accountability?