The Latest on long lines at polling places during Arizona's presidential primary (all times local): 
 
 4 p.m. 
 
 Arizona's top election official has certified the results of the March 22 presidential primary despite ongoing concerns that long lines and other problems may have affected people's right to vote. 
 
 Secretary of State Michele Reagan certified the official canvass Monday and said she had no authority to do anything except sign off on the election. 
 
 She says anyone who wants to sue over the results now has five days to file a court challenge. 
 
 Maricopa County records show that five polling places in metro Phoenix still had voters in line after midnight, including one location where the final ballot was cast at nearly 1 a.m. 
 
 The U.S. Justice Department is inquiring about the lines and other problems to evaluate whether the largest county in the state complied with voting rights laws. 
 
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 2:10 p.m. 
 
 The U.S. Justice Department is inquiring about long lines and other problems seen during Arizona's presidential primary to evaluate whether the largest county in the state complied with voting rights laws. 
 
 Maricopa County records show that five polling places in metro Phoenix still had voters in line after midnight, including one location where the final ballot was cast at nearly 1 a.m. 
 
 The Maricopa County Recorder's Office on Monday released a letter it received from federal law enforcement officials. 
 
 Justice Department Voting Section Chief Chris Herron asked for information on 10 specific items including a description of how county election officials determined how many polling places were needed on March 22 and whether potential impacts on minority voters were examined. 
 
 Citing budget issues, Maricopa County cut the number of polling places from 200 in 2012 to just 60 this year. 
 
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 11:30 p.m. 
 
 Records show 20 of the 60 polling places in Arizona's largest county still had people waiting in line to vote in the state's presidential primary more than three hours after the polls officially closed. 
 
 The records obtained by The Associated Press from the Maricopa County Recorder's Office also show five polling places saw their last ballot cast more than five hours after the 7 p.m. poll closing. One north Phoenix location saw its last voter just two minutes before 1 a.m. 
 
 Fourteen of the 20 sites were in Phoenix or its western suburbs, while six were in the eastern part of the Phoenix metro area. 
 
 The breakdown illustrates the extent of problems at the March 22 elections, which saw thousands wait for hours to cast a ballot. 
 
 Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan is expected to certify Monday that Democrat Hilary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump won their party's election. 
 
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 3:10 a.m. 
 
 Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan is set to certify results of the March 22 presidential primary that prompted lines of more than five hours after Maricopa County slashed the number of polling places. 
 
 Reagan is the state's top election official and will officially release the statewide vote courts and is expected to certify the results on Monday. 
 
 The official canvass will trigger an opportunity for candidates or individual voters to challenge the results. Lawyers for Democrat Bernie Sanders are considering whether a challenge is possible. Sanders' supporters believe he might gain additional delegates to the Democratic convention because many provisional ballots were thrown out in Maricopa County, but any challenge is legally difficult. 
 
 Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump won statewide. ||||| People wait in line to vote in the primary Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Chandler, Ariz. A document obtained from the Maricopa County Recorder's Office shows that five polling places in metro Phoenix still... (Associated Press) 
 
 PHOENIX (AP) — Gustavo Mendez waited four hours to vote in Arizona's presidential primary, marking his ballot just as poll workers brought out food for people stuck in line way past dark. 
 
 The 25-year-old looked forward to voting for Sen. Bernie Sanders, bringing his former girlfriend, who carried their young daughter, and a friend to line up at a west Phoenix church around 6 p.m. March 22. 
 
 After two hours, his fussy daughter and her mother had to leave. Mendez didn't vote for until just after 10 p.m. 
 
 "That's when they came in with food for people still there," said Mendez, who saw pizza boxes coming out as he made his exit. "We didn't expect it to take four hours." 
 
 His wait wasn't the longest. Some voters were forced to linger until 1 a.m. because of a steep cutback in polling places. 
 
 The Associated Press obtained a document from the Maricopa County Recorder's Office that shows the time each of the 60 polling sites closed, providing a more complete picture of the painstaking lines voters experienced outside churches, recreation centers and other locations. 
 
 Maricopa County, with its 2 million registered voters, had 200 polling places in the 2012 presidential primary and 400 in 2008. 
 
 The last polling place closed at 12:58 a.m., meaning the final voters had to wait nearly six hours. The polls officially closed at 7 p.m., but anyone in line at that point was allowed vote. It was one of five places that stayed open past midnight. In all, people were still voting at 10 p.m. or later at 20 out of 60 locations in the county. 
 
 The document is among those the U.S. Justice Department is seeking as it investigates a complaint by the Phoenix mayor that the election disproportionately affected minority voters. 
 
 A letter from the department released Monday by the recorder's office asked for information on 10 specific items, including a description of how election officials determined how many polling places were needed and whether potential effects on minority voters were examined. 
 
 The department declined further comment on its inquiry. 
 
 The frustrating waits come after the Arizona Legislature slashed funding last year for counties to carry out the presidential election. Election officials in Phoenix responded with scaled-back polling, citing a lack of money and the belief that people would vote by mail. 
 
 Despite the investigation, Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan on Monday certified results of the presidential primary, which Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton won. 
 
 As the state's top election official, Reagan didn't have the ability to reject the official canvass from the 15 counties, despite acknowledging problems that led some voters to be incorrectly left off rolls. The certification does, however, clear the way for any possible court challenges. 
 
 Reagan said her office and the Legislature may consider proposed changes in the way counties run future elections. Such changes previously required federal approval, but a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision threw out that portion of the Voting Rights Act. 
 
 Reagan has sidestepped questions about why she didn't review the changes in the presidential primary herself in the absence of federal oversight since the other parts of the law remain in force. 
 
 Her certification of the results opens a five-day window for a challenge, something an attorney for Sanders is considering. Attorney Chris Sautter said last week that there was evidence an unknown number of voters had their ballots thrown out because of problems with voter rolls. 
 
 "What's at stake are delegates," Sautter said. "Obviously, the outcome of the election for the primary is not going to be changed, but delegate counts could be changed." 
 
 Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton, but because Democrats allow delegates to their national convention proportionally, challenging the results could add to Sanders' numbers. The state has 10 superdelegates and 75 at-large allocated in the primary. 
 
 Sautter is a veteran election attorney who was in Florida throughout the 2000 presidential fiasco, saying the Arizona "election is pretty close to as bad as that one." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Terry Tang contributed to this report. ||||| “He is loved in Arizona. I thought he was treated unbelievably unfairly when they came down with their big decision to go get him right before the election voting started, as you know. And he lost in a fairly close election. He would’ve won the election, but they just hammered him just before the election. I thought that was a very, very unfair thing to do.” 
 
 — President Trump, news conference, Aug. 28, 2017 
 
 “Thank you @realdonaldtrump for seeing my conviction for what it is: a political witch hunt by holdovers in the Obama justice department!” 
 
 — Former sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, post on Twitter, Aug. 25, 2017 
 
 In a move that drew criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, President Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio of his criminal contempt of court conviction. The embattled former Arizona sheriff, who is a longtime political ally of Trump, thanked the president and claimed that his conviction was a “political witch hunt by holdovers in the Obama Justice Department.” 
 
 Trump similarly described Arpaio’s investigation as a political one that jeopardized his reelection chances. Let’s look at the facts. 
 
 The Facts 
 
 Federal investigations into Arpaio’s policing practices date to 2008, under the George W. Bush administration. (Previously, we covered Arpaio’s complex legal history over his policing practices cracking down on illegal immigration.) 
 
 That investigation, into potential civil rights violations, continued under Obama administration Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who prioritized enforcement of civil rights laws. In 2011, the Justice Department concluded that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office engaged in systemic racial profiling of Latinos. The Department of Homeland Security then removed the immigration-enforcement authority for Arpaio’s agency. 
 
 The conviction that Trump pardoned stems from a 2007 racial profiling case, Melendres v. Arpaio, that ran parallel for some time to the civil rights probe. Here’s a timeline of that case, and Arpaio’s campaigns in 2012 and 2016. 
 
 2007: Melendres dates to a traffic stop in 2007, and grew into a class-action lawsuit by Hispanic plaintiffs who alleged that sheriff’s deputies discriminated against Latinos in traffic stops. 
 
 2011: U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow ordered the agency to stop detaining people solely because they were suspected of being undocumented, and ordered sweeping changes to the office’s policies. 
 
 Snow was appointed by Bush and is known as a “straight-shooter,” ideologically a “very conservative Republican” who “quoted Scalia favorably.” 
 
 2012: Arpaio faced his first serious challenger in his bid for a sixth consecutive term as sheriff. Arpaio far outraised Democrat Paul Penzone, but 80 percent of funds raised for Arpaio’s campaign came from out-of-state donors — a sign of the waning local support for Arpaio. Penzone lost to Arpaio by six percentage points. 
 
 2013: Snow found that the sheriff’s office engaged in systemic racial profiling of Latinos in its anti-illegal-immigration efforts. But Arpaio and his deputies resisted Snow’s 2011 order, and Arpaio acknowledged as much in interviews with the media. For example, in April 2012, Arpaio told “PBS NewsHour”: “I’m still going to do what I’m doing. I’m still going to arrest illegal aliens coming into this country.” 
 
 2015: The Justice Department joined in the Melendres case to get the sheriff’s office to adopt court-ordered changes. Later that year, Snow found Arpaio in civil contempt of court. Arpaio argued that his violation was unintentional, and that the order was unclear. 
 
 July 2016: A poll conducted by a local Republican political firm found Penzone, again challenging Arpaio, had a three-point lead — indicating that Arpaio could face his toughest campaign. 
 
 August 2016: In an extraordinary move, Snow referred Arpaio and top aides to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution for a slew of contemptuous acts, including failing to produce materials and violating the court order. Snow also found that Arpaio and his chief deputy had committed perjury. 
 
 In September, a survey by the Arizona Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News found that the majority of Maricopa County registered voters viewed Arpaio unfavorably. 
 
 October 2016: The DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which investigates corruption charges against public officials, announced that it would charge Arpaio with criminal contempt of court. U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton took up the case. Bolton was so well regarded by both parties for her fairness that then-Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), one of the country’s most conservative senators, recommended her for nomination by President Bill Clinton. 
 
 Although the DOJ was not on any timeline to take up the case, it made its announcement on the eve of early voting. Arpaio and his attorneys question the timing of this. Still, had the DOJ declined to pursue it, Bolton could have assigned it to a private attorney, per Snow’s request. As Snow noted in his referral, the case was still under the judicial branch’s purview. 
 
 The charge may have swayed some voters, but polling throughout the summer showed the sheriff’s race was a toss-up. And by October 2016, a potential criminal contempt charge had loomed over Arpaio since early 2015 as a worst-case scenario, the Arizona Republic reported: “The threat of criminal prosecution became increasingly inevitable after a prolonged series of hearings” in 2015. 
 
 November 2016: Penzone won by 13 percentage points, unseating Arpaio after a quarter-century. 
 
 July 2017: Bolton found Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt after a bench trial. While Arpaio requested a jury trial, the Justice Department opposed it, and maintained that position even under Trump and the new Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 
 
 Arpaio’s attorney, Jack Wilenchik, said Arpaio was referring to the DOJ’s political appointees and the Public Integrity Section, “which announced that it would be bringing charges two weeks before his reelection (and while the former president was still in office), directly and materially contributing to Mr. Arpaio’s loss. Those are the prosecutors who brought the case.” He added: “It’s important to recognize that every prosecution is in some sense a political decision.” 
 
 Political appointees can set priorities for prosecution, but this argument by Arpaio and Trump does not comport with the historical context or the facts of the conviction. (The White House did not provide a response.) 
 
 Moreover, Raymond Hulser, who in 2015 became chief of the Public Integrity Section, is a nonpolitical career civil servant who has worked in the unit since 1990. The Criminal Division has nearly 700 lawyers and only about six of those lawyer positions are political appointments, per a DOJ official. The remaining 690-plus lawyers serve in the career ranks. 
 
 This column in the right-leaning Federalist offers a comprehensive account of the role that politics played over the past decade. But it’s clear that the conviction was not tied to the ideologies of Obama’s political appointees at DOJ. Instead, the decisions to convict Arpaio of civil and criminal contempt came from the judiciary — two U.S. District Court judges. Moreover, the threat of a criminal contempt charge loomed long before October 2016, as Arpaio was found in civil contempt early 2015. 
 
 “These were not Department of Justice charges. This was the court’s request that its order be vindicated with a trial. Whether it was the Department of Justice who was going to, at the judiciary’s invitation, prosecute this case or a lawyer here in Phoenix, a prosecution was going to take place,” said Paul Charlton, former U.S. attorney in Arizona under the Bush administration. 
 
 Moreover, there is criticism of the DOJ that it did not prosecute Arpaio as aggressively as it could have, Charlton said: “Judge Murray Snow’s order indicated that the court believed that Arpaio had perjured himself and obstructed justice. The single misdemeanor count prosecuted by the Obama DOJ was an exercise in restraint, and others would say far too timid given the facts.” 
 
 The Pinocchio Test 
 
 Arpaio’s conviction stems from a lawsuit filed by individuals who were racially discriminated against by the policing practices under his watch. A Bush-appointed federal judge ordered the agency to stop this, but Arpaio resisted and flouted the order. That judge found Arpaio guilty of civil contempt of court, and referred his case for criminal conviction. Another federal judge, known among Democrats and Republicans for her fairness, issued his criminal conviction. 
 
 The DOJ’s announcement on the eve of early voting may have swayed some voters from Arpaio. But local support for the six-term sheriff began declining long before that, and voters knew since early 2015 that Arpaio may face a criminal contempt charge. Despite Trump’s claim, there was no clear path to victory for Arpaio before the DOJ charge. 
 
 Trump and Arpaio continue to make false claims about his conviction. But there are no presidential pardons for Pinocchios. 
 
 Four Pinocchios 
 
 
 
 
 
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 Share the Facts 2017-08-30 11:34:21 UTC Washington Post 1 1 5 Washington Post Rating: Four Pinocchios Washington Post Rating: Joe Arpaio "is loved in Arizona. … He lost in a fairly close election. He would’ve won the election, but they just hammered him just before the election. I thought that was a very, very unfair thing to do." Donald Trump President of the United States in a news conference Monday, August 28, 2017 2017-08-28 Read More info
– Long lines at polling sites in Arizona's March 22 primary led Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton to call the night a "fiasco"—and the Justice Department to now investigate whether there were civil rights violations regarding what Stanton called "unacceptably disparate distribution of polling locations," Reuters reports. The DoJ's civil rights division penned a letter Friday asking Maricopa County, the state's most populous, to determine if federal law was violated regarding, among other things, the number and location of polling sites (the county cut them from 200 to 60 in 2012 in an apparent bid to save money). The Justice Department's reason for this request: reports of "disproportional burden in waiting times … in some areas with substantial racial or language minority populations," the letter noted. Those waiting times were incredibly inconvenient: The AP notes that some voters waited nearly six hours, with the last vote cast at almost 1am at one site; polls had closed at 7pm, but voters already in line at that point were allowed to cast ballots. Poll workers even reportedly brought pizza to hungry voters. Maricopa County has until April 22 to respond to the DoJ's letter, which included 10 specific requests for information, including polling locations, procedures, and response to public backlash, the Arizona Republic reports. "We are going to gather the information … and we will make it public," the county elections director says. Despite these issues, Arizona's secretary of state certified the primary results on Monday, calling it for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, per the AP. (Here's hoping Wisconsin's big night Tuesday goes more smoothly.)