How Arizona’s Maricopa County Grew to become the Battleground for Election Conspiracies
On a stifling Monday night in August, Loretta Siwik walked into a gathering of Arizona District 12 Democrats in a suburb south of Phoenix. Siwik considers herself a “McCain Republican,” however, because the Social gathering continued to embrace Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election had been stolen, she advised me that she was “exploring.” “I don’t like the thought of a conspiracy,” she mentioned. “It makes individuals too anxious.” The assembly befell on the Pecos Senior Middle, a fluorescent-lit room dotted with indicators selling multigenerational bingo and newbie bridge lessons. By six-thirty, the room was crowded with a couple of hundred individuals. A girl carrying a shirt that learn “We will not be good, however they’re nuts: Vote Democrat” circulated a sign-in sheet. There was a sense of cautious optimism within the air. The Prepare dinner Political Report had just lately shifted the Presidential race in Arizona from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up.” Days earlier, a Kamala Harris–Tim Walz rally in Glendale had drawn big crowds. “It was slightly bit like a rock live performance,” one attendee advised me. “We began out with this ‘We’ll do one of the best we are able to’ angle, however now we predict we are able to win this.”
Siwik advised me that she was most to listen to from the night’s featured speaker, Tim Stringham, a novice politician working for an obscure however more and more vital—and more and more contested—function: Maricopa County recorder. The recorder is partly liable for working and certifying elections within the Phoenix space. The county will not be solely the most important aggressive jurisdiction within the nation, with extra residents than Oregon or Iowa, however a battleground space in a battleground state. In recent times, its electoral processes have turn into a spotlight of conspiracists. The present recorder, Stephen Richer, a Republican, had been a bulwark towards election deniers, however he just lately misplaced within the major to a MAGA-affiliated candidate. Now Siwik was looking forward to Stringam’s reassurance. “I’m hoping to listen to that the elections are secure, and that we don’t have to fret about it,” she mentioned.
The concept elections are rigged, a persistent preoccupation of Trump’s, has turn into a defining political problem in Arizona. The Republican-led State Senate ordered an audit of the 2020 election, to be run by a Florida safety firm referred to as Cyber Ninjas. After a bumbling and scandal-plagued course of, the audit confirmed that Joe Biden had gained the state. Eleven false electors—together with two sitting lawmakers—are at present going through felony costs for his or her makes an attempt to subvert the election. One election administrator, a Republican, advised me that questioning election integrity has turn into a “litmus check” within the Social gathering. “Nearly each single Republican who defended the election system misplaced within the major,” he mentioned. “I believed it’d occur, however the margins stunned me. You understand, it wasn’t even actually that shut.”
Trump has not forgiven the Republicans who stood in his approach in 2020. At a latest marketing campaign occasion in Georgia, he denigrated the state’s in style Republican governor, Brian Kemp. “He’s a foul man, he’s a disloyal man, and he’s a really common governor,” Trump mentioned. Up to now 4 years, Trump’s allies all through the nation have maneuvered to take management of election administration. In Georgia, the State Election Board, which is managed by Republicans, just lately handed a rule that would function a pretext to keep away from certifying election outcomes. In Arizona, the main focus has been on the recorder’s workplace, which Eli Crane, a Republican congressman who represents a part of Maricopa County, referred to as “one of the vital vital elected positions in America.” “This county race isn’t an area race,” Jake Hoffman, a state senator and the founding father of the Arizona Freedom Caucus, tweeted final month, including that the recorder has “NATIONAL” significance. Even an out-of-state politician has weighed in. Senator Mike Lee, of Utah, endorsed certainly one of Stringham’s Republican opponents, Justin Heap, who has strategically averted saying whether or not he believes that the 2020 election was stolen, though he has allied with individuals—most notably Kari Lake, the Arizona G.O.P.’s Senate nominee this 12 months—who’re much less circumspect.
On the eve of the 2022 election, I went on a tour of the Maricopa County tabulation facility with Richer, a self-described “Reagan Republican” and a member of the Federalist Society, who had been elected as recorder two years earlier. In 2020, Trump misplaced Arizona by fewer than eleven thousand votes, the closest margin within the nation. “For about one week, everyone cherished me,” Richer advised me—he was certainly one of just a few Republicans who unseated a Democrat within the state that 12 months. “After which anyone requested me, ‘Was the election stolen?’ And I mentioned, ‘I haven’t seen something to counsel that.’ ” (The recorder manages the voter rolls and is liable for early voting, which accounts for greater than three-quarters of ballots solid within the state; the county’s Board of Supervisors handles Election Day voting.)
Richer is a fan of logic puzzles, Harry Potter, and enterprise biographies. He appeared to suppose that, if he simply saved explaining how elections truly labored, individuals would ultimately come round. As he walked me by the power, his patter was practiced, however he seemed exhausted. (A neighborhood journalist surveying how a lot time state officers spent of their places of work as soon as wrote that “none of them got here wherever near the present county recorder,” who “would possibly stay there.”) Richer identified a row of high-speed tabulators behind a plate-glass window. “We needed to buy 4 new ones as a result of we despatched their sisters to the Cyber Ninjas,” he mentioned. He rattled off the ways in which election officers had tried to make the vote-counting course of safer and clear: computer systems with out entry to Wi-Fi, saved in Faraday cages; a poll vault that would suck all of the oxygen out of the room within the occasion of a fireplace. “You possibly can see every thing’s uncovered wiring, to have the ability to hint precisely the place it goes,” he mentioned. “Nearly every thing on this facility is underneath 24/7 video surveillance, and you’ll watch it from our Website online.”
The Republicans working for the highest three statewide places of work in 2022 had all dabbled in election conspiracies. All of them misplaced. The Washington Put up deemed the result an “utter catastrophe” for election deniers; it appeared, briefly, as if Arizona Republicans might need to take a special tack. As a substitute, many plunged even deeper into conspiracy theories, claiming that the 2022 election had been stolen, too. They directed their assaults at Richer, who in his public appearances displayed an more and more wounded exasperation. “These had been individuals who donated to Stephen Richer, who had been pals with Stephen Richer, and so I feel for him to see this unimaginable backlash was very private, and really surprising,” Stringham advised me. Lake, who misplaced the governor’s race in 2022, was a very biting critic. After Richer’s defamation swimsuit towards her succeeded, she mocked him in a video. “I advised my crew, Let’s lower proper to the chase. The place did my phrases damage Mr. Richer? Present me on this doll the place my phrases damage you?” she mentioned. “My phrases are true, however how did they damage you?” Earlier this 12 months, Shelby Busch, the chair of Arizona’s delegation to the Republican Nationwide Conference, was caught on tape saying, “If Stephen Richer walked on this room, I’d lynch him.” (Busch later mentioned in a press release that her phrases had been “political hyperbole and no approach meant as a menace of violence.”) A Texas man who threatened Richer is at present serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence in federal jail. “I want somebody would ship a message to AZ by going after this guys youngsters,” the person had written.
Some Arizona Republicans who defended the integrity of latest elections have since determined to go away politics, however Richer opted to run once more in 2024. At a gathering of the Solar Metropolis West Republican Membership, Richer mentioned he didn’t suppose that the 2020 election was stolen, and the gang erupted in boos. At a debate this summer time, Richer stood onstage with Heap and one other Republican opponent, Don Hiatt, a bearded I.T. specialist. Hiatt cited the debunked election-conspiracy movie “2000 Mules.” “Ballots might be injected into the system,” he warned darkly. Heap had made questioning the electoral system certainly one of his key points throughout his one time period as a state consultant. When requested on the debate if the 2020 election was stolen, Hiatt mentioned sure, however Heap hedged. “What I can say is that . . . there have been inconsistencies and illegalities that occurred,” he mentioned. “The voters have misplaced confidence within the system. In the end it doesn’t matter what I would take into consideration the system if a considerable portion of our voters now not belief that their ballots are being taken care of, that their voices are being heard.” Richer’s frustration appeared to briefly overwhelm him. “I respect that Don not less than has the braveness to say sure,” he mentioned. “However Justin stood right here once more and he hemmed and he hawed, he didn’t provide you with a sure or no, and I’d counsel that that is what’s damaging to confidence of voters in Arizona.” Six days later, Heap gained the first, by almost 9 factors. (Richer and Hiatt acquired about thirty-five and twenty-two per cent of the vote, respectively.) One in every of Richer’s closing duties in workplace will probably be to manage early voting on this 12 months’s election. Election Day voting will probably be run by Jack Sellers, a veteran Republican politician and the chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, who was ousted in his major by an election questioner.
Since Richer’s defeat, consideration has turned to Stringham, a thirty-five-year-old Military veteran. I sat down with him within the workplace of the Maricopa County Democratic Social gathering, the place one wall was plastered with marketing campaign indicators studying “Stringham: Veteran for Recorder.” Stringham is wonky and self-deprecating, and appeared to have some ambivalence about his new function as a politician. “We are able to discuss so long as you want,” he advised me. “After I’m not speaking to you, they make me go name individuals.” Two years in the past, when the chief director of the county Social gathering tried to recruit him to run for workplace, Stringham considered it for just a few weeks, then declined. “He mentioned, ‘You understand, we thought if anyone would do it, it’d be an Afghan-war veteran. When you don’t wish to, I perceive—simply bear in mind, on November sixth, that I requested you,’ ” Stringham recalled. He and his spouse drove house from the assembly principally in silence. Quickly, he determined to go for it.
If Richer tried to win over skeptical voters with details and logic, Stringham appears to suppose that fundamental competence and decency will do it. “You’re a midlevel county bureaucrat,” he mentioned. “It’s very administrative, and it’s not a partisan factor. However we’ve gone to a wierd place.” He knew that successful the election would require persuading individuals who would possibly in any other case resist voting for a Democrat. (Maricopa County is break up virtually evenly between registered Republicans, Democrats, and independents, though Democrats make up the smallest share.) “My workers is aware of that the phrase ‘struggle’ doesn’t seem in my e-mails. I feel it’s inappropriate in politics,” he mentioned. “So how will we get individuals excited in regards to the recorder’s race whereas on the similar time attempting to be real and inoffensive and productive? It’s, like, ‘Democracy’s on the road—however be cool!’ ‘That is actually vital—however keep calm!’ ”
As election administration grows extra politicized, Stringham advised me, he worries about shedding institutional information in native authorities. “It’s very straightforward to interrupt issues,” he mentioned. However he may additionally think about extra pressing penalties if Heap is elected: “If you’re answerable to this very vehement minority that’s lifeless set on ‘Both we are going to win or you’ll reject the election findings,’ are we going to get to the place you’d have Maricopa County simply not certify the election?”
This type of “political doomsday state of affairs,” as Stringham referred to as it, will not be as far-fetched because it might sound. A number of Arizonans appeared on an inventory of “rogue election officers” who refused to certify outcomes, assembled by Residents for Accountability and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan authorized watchdog group. In 2022, two supervisors in Cochise County, a rural space alongside the border with Mexico, initially pushed for a full hand depend and refused to certify the election outcomes. The courts ultimately intervened, and the supervisors there at the moment are going through prison costs. Cochise County is sufficiently small that the riot didn’t derail the electoral course of, however an identical refusal to certify the leads to Maricopa County—which has about thirty occasions as many registered voters as Cochise and provides a majority of the state’s Democratic votes—may probably ship Arizona’s electoral votes right into a protracted authorized limbo.
After Stringham spoke on the Pecos Senior Middle, I talked with Clyde Parks, a retired engineer and a Navy veteran, who used to vote Republican. He advised me he appreciated that Stringham was a fellow-veteran. “Is he certified? I’m unsure but,” he mentioned. “He didn’t communicate to what he’s finished to make him certified. However, if his opponent is what he says he’s, then I’ll vote for him even when he’s not certified.” ♦
