Arizona expects to be back at the center of election attacks. Its top officials are going on offense

PHOENIX — The room is behind a chain link fence and then behind black iron gates. Guards block the entrance, which requires a security badge. The glass surrounding it is unbreakable.

What deserves all these layers of protection is somewhat surprising: machines that count votes during elections in Arizona’s Maricopa County. The security measures are a necessary expense, County Recorder Stephen Richer said, as Arizona and its largest county have become hotbeds of election misinformation and conspiracy theories that have led to near-constant threats and intimidation of election workers.

“What would be even more shameful is if we couldn’t look workers in the eye and say, ‘We’re doing everything we can to make sure you’re safe,’” he said.

Richer’s job is to oversee voter registration and early voting, but since taking power in 2021, he has spent much of his time preparing for disinformation and its consequences. The state’s razor-thin presidential tally in 2020 made it a national epicenter for misinformation about voter fraud, problems with voting machines and false results.

The false claims, promoted by prominent Republicans such as presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump and Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, have prompted protesters to gather outside vote counting centers and patrol mailboxes. The claims have fueled death threats against election workers and their families and prompted top election officials across Arizona to quit.

The state has also become a target for attacks from election meddling and other bad actors who repeatedly try to hack or disable the state’s electronic systems, Foreign Minister Adrian Fontes said.

The challenges come as election offices across the country have faced mounting concerns, including persistent misinformation and intimidation of election workers, artificial intelligence deepfakes used to disenfranchise voters, potential cyberattacks from foreign governments and criminal ransomware attacks on computer systems. Many of these agencies are understaffed and underfunded, even as the federal government has raised alarms this year about attempts at foreign election interference.

In Arizona, with a presidential rematch looming and high-profile battle for the U.S. Senate, Republican Richer and Democrat Fontes are taking more aggressive steps than ever to rebuild voter trust, combat misinformation and address attacks immediately.

In recent interviews and tours of their operations, they said they hope their efforts will be enough to counter an attack they know will come as the November general election approaches.

Fontes, a Marine Corps veteran, has brought his military mentality to the office since he started last year. He has deployed “tiger teams” to solve problems and organized simulations to prepare employees for AI-generated disinformation.

He has assembled a four-person information security team that is strengthening defenses against cyberattacks and gathering intelligence on election-related threats descending on Arizona from near and far.

The team fills a position that has been unusual in election offices statewide until now: a full-time analyst dedicated solely to monitoring the internet for disinformation and threats.

Conservatives in other states have objected to their election offices partnering with companies to monitor online postings, arguing that it allows government surveillance and censorship. Arizonans who voted at an early voting site in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe before last Tuesday’s presidential election were also unconvinced.

‘Do you monitor it for threats? Certainly. You have to guarantee safety,” says 40-year-old Thomas Abia. But he said checking for falsehoods is a “gray area,” raising privacy concerns.

Fontes defends the need for a dedicated employee, whose name he declined to share to protect that person’s safety.

“Yes, we are keeping an eye on a certain group,” he said. “We are monitoring people who want to destroy our democracy. And that is not political.”

The team’s leader, Chief Information Security Officer Michael Moore, said the team does not force social media platforms to remove posts and only reports particularly egregious posts, as any platform user can.

Moore came to his job after doing similar work for Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.

He said that after seeing the hundreds of threats that disrupted the lives of election workers during the 2022 midterm elections, he believes those spreading misinformation are directly responsible.

In one instance, the day after Richer spoke at a chaotic public meeting at which county officials certified the November 2022 election results, Richer received two voicemails on his cell phone telling him to “run” and “hide.”

The caller, a California man whose expletive-laden voicemails claimed Richer wanted to “cheat our elections” and “take Americans out of the real vote,” was arrested last month, according to the Justice Department.

“Sophisticated snake oil salesmen tell people what they want to hear in the spirit of an election conspiracy – and that encourages people to take action,” Moore said. “If someone you trusted told you that the election was stolen and democracy was stolen, wouldn’t you want to act on it?”

Fontes and Richer hope to return Arizonans to disagreeing on the issues, rather than trusting elections.

“We’re not talking about America’s transportation infrastructure or education infrastructure, but all the other things that we really want to see developed,” Fontes said. “That loss of civic faith is the real problem we have.”

They also agree that restoring public trust requires transparency. They are already practicing that.

Fontes is testing a nationwide system that would allow voters to receive text messages when their ballot is mailed, delivered, returned and counted. Such a system exists in the state’s two largest counties.

Richer recently hosted his first “Ask Me Anything” live video session on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. He regularly communicates directly with voters and his team has organized more than 30 tours of the tabulation center in the past year, inviting everyone to sign up.

Fontes and Richer say one of the biggest challenges of disinformation is the doubt it creates among large groups of voters.

Jane Carter, a 62-year-old property manager, is one of them. As a Republican, she said she has no confidence in election officials.

“I don’t really have much confidence in anyone doing anything,” she said after returning her ballot on a sunny afternoon in early March.

Carter said her concerns increased when a 101-year-old she cared for received multiple ballots in the mail. But Carter said she will keep her ballot and she appreciates that.

Other voters said they had no such concerns and were angry about the false information in their state.

“I’m really disturbed by what appears to be a high level of ignorance,” said 76-year-old Democratic voter Loretta Greene. “I trust the leadership at the highest positions in the state of Arizona.”

Signature verification and other security measures make the risk of fraud in mail-in voting extremely low. But Richer said he has been aggressively culling voter rolls to minimize the number of ballots sent to the wrong place, hoping it can boost voter confidence.

He has taken other steps to address public concerns, such as removing excess wiring around tabulators so observers can tell there is no internet connection. His office posts live feeds from the tabulation center 24 hours a day, even as some activists have at times revealed personal information and spread misinformation about the employees shown on camera.

“We continue to lack transparency and then try to address the consequences when they are negative,” Richer said.

Republican Senator Ken Bennett argues that even more transparency is needed. Last year, he sponsored a bipartisan bill that would require detailed voter data and images of cast ballots to be posted online for the public to see.

“Far too many people still question the integrity of our elections,” Bennett said. “It is still building and will continue to build until we do reasonable, common sense things that allow people to verify elections.”

The legislation, which Fontes supported, passed but was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs last May, in part because she said it threatened voter anonymity and unnecessarily burdened election workers.

Reversing public perception is proving to be an uphill battle in the county where election lies have spread, even after a Republican-led audit and other post-election reviews found no evidence of widespread fraud or inaccurate results in the 2020 election.

During the recent presidential primaries, Richer saw a conservative activist on X complaining about receiving two ballots. He suspected she had changed addresses too close to the election, resulting in a second ballot being delivered to her new home.

That wouldn’t be a cause for concern: Once the new ballot went out, the county’s system would invalidate the original ballot and never count it again.

Richer responded to the post to explain. But people on the Internet still used the activist’s viral post to claim the election was not reliable.

“Here we go: Maricopa County sends out counterfeit ballots AGAIN,” read a conservative website headline.

“Early voting equals cheating early,” one X user replied. “Now you can witness one of the many ways it happens.”

Richer said he has had to accept that no matter how hard he tries, some people won’t change their minds.

“I was a romantic who believed in a kind of marketplace of ideas – that, you know, the best ideas and the truth will bubble to the top, because man is a rational being,” he said. “I’m not sure I still feel that way after the last few years in this office.”

So when a voter responded to his X-post during the presidential election with the words, “I don’t trust you,” Richer responded the best way he knew how.

“Okay,” he wrote. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you think differently.”

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Associated Press video journalist Serkan Gurbuz contributed to this report.

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