The turning point for Stephen Richer came five months into his first term as an Arizona county recorder when his office was accused of engaging in election fraud.
Richer, a lifelong conservative and proud Trump voter, had run on the platform of making “Maricopa County Recorder’s Office Boring Again.” As chief election official of the second-largest voting district in the country, and one that had been embroiled in an election fraud controversy since 2020, Richer sought to lower the temperature by avoiding the media spotlight and, well, being boring.
However, just seven days after Richer took office on Jan. 4, 2021, the spotlight was again turned to the Maricopa Elections Department as the Arizona Senate moved to audit the county’s November 2020 election results. The renewed attention brought to Richer’s office a string of death threats, harassing emails and near-violent altercations — a reaction that has become all too familiar to election officials since the 2020 election.
Election workers around the country have faced an increase in accusations and intimidation since former President Donald Trump refused to concede the 2020 election, causing some to resign, which could leave many counties less prepared for this fall’s midterms.
In a Brennan Center survey conducted earlier this year, 1 out of every 6 election officials reported having received threats because of their job, and more than three-quarters of those interviewed felt these threats had become more common in recent years. The survey, which interviewed nearly 600 election workers from across the country and political spectrum, also found that nearly one-third of election workers reported to know someone who had left that position as a result of threats or intimidation following the 2020 election.
The data shows that threats aimed at public-facing election officials, such as Richer and secretaries of state, have not been limited to them. For many election workers, intimidation has become a common feature of the job.
After months of complying with the state’s audit, information technology workers in Maricopa’s election department became the target of new threats. On May 12, 2021, a Twitter account speaking on behalf of the company auditing Maricopa’s election results announced it had found evidence that Maricopa County election workers had deleted databases in anticipation of the audit.
Not only were the claims false (they were promptly put to rest by the audit’s own investigation), but they also put regular election workers in harm’s way, Richer said in an interview with the Deseret News. The IT employees accused of the supposed data deletion were threatened with being hanged for treason soon after the tweet was posted, according to Richer.
Richer knew as soon as he read the tweet his months of determined silence were over.
“I felt disbelief, disgust, that it would go that far as to start now accusing individual employees, who are simply going about their day, of unlawful activity,” Richer said.
Recognizing that despite his best efforts the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office was not about to achieve its goal of avoiding political controversy, Richer began to speak out for the first time since entering office, publishing a 38-page letter explaining his conservative bona fides, debunking claims of election fraud, and detailing flaws with the state Senate-ordered audit of the 2020 presidential election.
“There are many things I would do for the Republican candidate for President, but I won’t lie about the election,” Richer wrote.
The state Senate’s audit results were eventually released in September 2021, confirming Trump’s loss and offering no substantial evidence of fraud that couldn’t be debunked by the Maricopa County Election Department. However, despite this case being closed, the story of Maricopa County continues to be repeated across the country, resulting in the…
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