One week later and county recorder still under fire

PHOENIX (KSAZ) - Helen Purcell is speaking out a week after problems surfaced with the Arizona Presidential Preference Election. She says she knew early in the morning when lines should have been subsiding at polling places in Phoenix, instead they were growing longer. By then it was too late, and she has been apologizing ever since.

It seems like no one has apologized more in seven days since last weeks election than Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell.

"So I'm really sorry about that, but to get nasty, and the things I've listened to, things in my face and so forth, I don't know where decorum has gone," said Helen Purcell.

"This is serious as rape, it is as serious as murder, this is the rape and murder of our democracy," said one person during a AZ House hearing into the election.

"Absolutely, it shocks me that we have to come to that," said Purcell.

Purcell refers in part to the hearing that was loud and angry as voters blasted the debacle that led to a 5 hour line to vote on election day.

A protester was hauled out of the hearing as people jeered his arrest.

Purcell says she realizes some of the anger is political positioning by some, but she is surprised by the level of vitriol.

"We need another day of a voting, we need to count all the provisional ballots," said a protester at the hearings.

Twenty-four thousand provisional ballots have been tallied, 20,000 of them says Purcell will not be counted.

"That's what the majority of this is are independents who went to the polls, we have to give them a ballot and allow them to vote, we know if they are a true independent it's not going to count," said Purcell.

Many are not expected to be much happier when the official canvass of the election is done.