Saturday, April 9, 2016
Open letter to Ms. Helen Purcell
Election Recorder, Recorder and Elections Dept. Main Downtown Office 111 S. Third Ave.
I witnessed the appalling mismanaged 2016 primary election in Arizona's Maricopa County: it made me sick. Literally! The failure of that election took away electoral votes from a candidate I hope to see become President. As a voter, I take this personally.
Unfairly, crudely, cruelly, thousands of voters have been disenfranchised by your plan.
How is it that someone with your experience as a recorder ‘mistakenly’ come up a plan that, since 2008, has reduced the number of polling places from 400 in 2008, to 210 in 2012, and finally to 60 in 2016? Voter suppression is alive and well under your administration of election policies and practices in Maricopa!
Before our eyes: on National TV, we witnessed the white-collar crime: A Major Election Fraud unfolding in Arizona! Innocent people suffering in the heat while you watched your handiwork in air conditioned comfort; then, hardly breaking a sweat, you slithered, and dodged the truth until a public hearing forced you to admit it! Cold-bloodedly, you planned and executed the whole debacle. The impact was statewide, but it impacted millions nationally! Our candidate was cheated! We were cheated!
While preventing all those votes from being cast in Arizona, your calculated actions prevented accumulation of electoral votes that should have been received by a very worthy National candidate! “I’m sorry” just doesn’t cut it. You should forfeit your job at the very least, and offer to personally pay for a rerun of the election after all the previously available polling places are reinstated!
If I were a billionaire, I would set up an unprecedentedly powerful class action suit against you! You would be lucky to come out of it with water to drink. You knew just how far you could insult the citizens of Arizona, and you coldly proceeded--'because you knew you could get away with it". You forget, however, you additionally insulted all voting citizens of the USA. We were cheated early and long! You, personally, didn’t have to stand in the sun to vote as your fellow citizens did. That should be your penalty, 5 to 8 hours in the sun before you get to vote. Forever more!
I will post this open letter in as many media sources as possible. You will not be forgotten.
--Marcia V. Riquelme, 3953 Finch Trail, Deforest, Wisconsin 53532
608-446-1446,