Election conspiracists haven’t stop because the election, both: A Maricopa Board of Supervisors resulted in chaos final month after a gaggle of election conspiracists rushed the dais on the finish of the assembly shouting that a “revolution” was underway. Board members needed to be ushered out a facet door by safety guards. Threats and harassment from Trump supporters have pushed hundreds of election officials to resign, and thousands more to go silent over fears of being attacked.

This all makes Richer an outlier. Richer has continued to talk out in opposition to allegations of election fraud and insecurity, regardless of ongoing threats and harassment. Richer does it, he tells WIRED, as a result of he nonetheless believes he’s best-placed to counter disinformation being unfold on-line. And Richer has thrown his hat into the ring as soon as once more and is looking for reelection for Maricopa County Recorder in November. In the Republican main, Richer faces Justin Heap, a state consultant who has been a vocal critic of election administration in Maricopa County and is aligned with numerous election deniers.

“Going online and engaging on Twitter does open you up to a certain amount of return fire, which might not be something that some people want to have in their lives,” Richers says. “Our approach in Maricopa County has been to put out as much information as we can in lots of different mediums, and then hope that some of it yields dividends.”

He additionally is aware of he has an uphill battle forward of November. Recently, a survey from the Bipartisan Policy Center discovered that simply 18 p.c of Americans look to native election directors for info. “This is a notable decline,” the report states.

“I do find myself often reflecting, what am I doing here? Am I doing it to correct the record? Am I doing it to win an argument?,” Richer mentioned. “I need to keep in mind is winning an argument is not the same as persuading people.”

Richer, a former company lawyer, was elected Maricopa County Recorder in November 2020 following his defeat of Democratic incumbent Adrian Fontes, who’s now secretary of state. As Maricopa County turned floor zero of the newly rising election denial motion, Richer turned the main focus of assaults, regardless of having nothing to do with the administration of the election.

After criticizing the so-called election audit authorized by the Arizona senate, Richer acquired a dying menace through voicemail, and in 2022 a Missouri man was indicted on federal charges linked to the decision. Richer acquired scores of threatening calls throughout this era and says the threats got here from individuals in half a dozen states. Many of the callers, he provides, have been arrested for making threats, together with a person from Alabama who was arrested just last week.

The accusations of election fraud weren’t simply nameless, nevertheless: In 2022, Lake accused Richer of sabotaging her marketing campaign for governor by incorrectly printing 300,000 ballots that have been subsequently discounted. Richer sued her; Lake’s legal professionals tried to get the lawsuit dismissed in December by claiming their consumer’s feedback about Richer have been merely “her opinions about the facts” and subsequently protected speech.

Despite this, Richer continues to talk out and continues to tweet. Not everybody hates him: In 2021, he was named Arizonan of the Year by the Arizona Republic. In the identical yr, The Phoenix New Times named him the Best Republican Politician of the Year for his willingness to talk the reality in regards to the integrity of the state’s election processes.

And he usually thinks about what allegations of fraud are value responding to and amplifying. “At what point do you engage and then risk promoting it to a larger audience? Or do you just let it die a natural death in another four or five hours, because most of the stuff has a pretty short shelf life on social media,” Richer tells WIRED. “The calculus for [responding to Savela’s tweet] was that she’s a political actor who works with a political organization that was seemingly trying to spread this to try to hurt people’s confidence in the system, so that’s why I chose to engage.”