PHOENIX — “There's never been a perfect election,” former Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell said, “and anybody who says they had a perfect election, they never had a perfect election.”

Purcell presided over the county's top elections for seven terms and 28 years, using everything from paper punch cards to electronic voting machines.

And 28 years later, she remembers the first time she heard a candidate publicly say she couldn't be trusted.

“I couldn't believe people were saying things like that,” Purcell said.

Sure, sometimes candidates would show up to the polls not believing that their support might have dried up or that there must have been a miscount, but after watching the process, they always left understanding why they lost, Purcell said.

But beginning in 2016, her final year in office, false claims about the integrity of the election began to circulate.

Since then, she has watched her successors deal with published conspiracy theories, protests, election night rallies and death threats.

That's why she wrote an op-ed in The Arizona Republic to try to head off claims that will come up in Tuesday's primary.

“This is what's happening,” Purcell said. “If you don't believe it, come and join us.”

Purcell wrote that Maricopa County's election system was built to be transparent. There are glass windows at the counting center so people can watch the election proceedings, and there are cameras that live stream the elections 24 hours a day. People can volunteer to observe the election or show up and learn for themselves how the election proceeds.

That's not to say there aren't problems: There are, but Purcell said they are typically mistakes and annoyances, not grand schemes that will affect the outcome of the election.

“Something happens in every election,” Purcell said, such as poll workers not showing up to open the doors, computers that count attendance sometimes not starting up or people undercounting how many people would vote.

These issues led to Purcell's loss of reelection in 2016, when the number of polling places was reduced from 200 to 60. Long lines formed at polling places for the presidential election, with some people waiting more than five hours to cast their ballot.

But in the end, everyone voted, as they do every year, and the votes were counted.

Helen Purcell, now 88, could have sat back and watched as others dealt with false allegations and conspiracies. But she couldn't. She said the election was 28 years of her life, and she couldn't stay silent while it was under attack.

“I want people to respect our system,” she said. “We've worked hard for years to establish this system, and I want people to respect it and feel safe going out and voting. This is about our country, the future of our country.”

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