He has the look of someone who has seen a lot and experienced a lot. “Four years. “We are exhausted”, he sighs. In this phase of counting the votes – they are still early votes – Stephen Richer, one of those responsible for operations, allowed himself a short break outside the bunker, the electoral center of Maricopa County, in Arizona (southwest).
It’s 23°C in the middle of the day, and election officials in this crucial county for the state of Arizona, with 62% of voters, feel relieved: no incident has fueled extremist suspicions – paranoia for some – about the electoral process. There is practically no queue in front of the polling stations: two minutes on average and you only have to consult the regional application on your phone to anticipate the waiting time at each of the 426 polling stations and make your choice.
Only one encounter was reported: when Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne came within 75 feet (23 m) of the Paradise Valley Community College polling station. The 79-year-old man was trying to collect signatures for his re-election campaign… in 2026.
Stephen Richer holds the title of county recorder: he heads the office responsible for registering voters on electoral rolls and managing absentee ballots. Since early voting opened on October 9, he has sometimes spent the night examining the ballots himself, before posting photos of piles of envelopes and baskets on social media, in the name of transparency. Persecuted for four years by the revenge of the Trumpists, Stephen Richer has not despaired of making public opinion understand that it is impossible to manipulate the elections and that he himself, a lifelong Republican, and the citizens recruited for the recount are doing his part. work honestly.
Viewed from the bunker parking lot on Lincoln Avenue south of Phoenix, the 2024 elections – the sixtieth since the founding of the republic – are painful to watch. County Sheriff Russ Skinner is sorry, too. “You can see the difference with 2020 », he emphasizes, deploring the reinforcement of security that has become necessary to “ensure that democracy can work.”
Vendetta against the “traitors”
After the November 2020 election, hundreds of armed Trump supporters laid siege to downtown for several days, in shock: for the first time since 1996, a Democrat, Joe Biden, took over the Republican stronghold that is Arizona. They were convinced that the elections were being “ stolen ” to its candidate thanks to the generalization of voting by mail during the Covid-19 pandemic. The billionaire has never admitted defeat (by only 10,457 votes) and the State has become a mecca for conspiracists. denarii (who reject the electoral result) and death threats against electoral workers.
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