'I don't have to take it lying down': How one AZ election official confronts 'bullies'
When Stephen Richer first campaigned to run elections in Arizona's largest county, the Republican official never expected to receive death threats for simply correcting misinformation about voting.
"All of it's beyond what I bargained for," Richer said in an interview with AFP at the high-security Maricopa County election center in Phoenix.
"I think three people have been arrested for things that they've said to me. We've had police outside of our house. People will get into your face at an event and start spitting on you and pushing you."
Now, ahead of the November 5 presidential election pitting Kamala Harris against Donald Trump, the 39-year-old Richer is bracing for another onslaught of disinformation and harassment.
He has even taken the extraordinary step of suing Republican US Senate candidate Kari Lake, who has repeatedly claimed he mishandled the 2022 governor's race that she lost.
The southwestern swing state was one of several targeted by conspiracy theories of widespread fraud and vote tampering after the 2020 and 2022 elections, many of which AFP debunked.
"We ran out of options," Richer said, occasionally spreading his arms in exasperation.
"I don't like bullies. I don't have to take it lying down."
- 'Front-row seat' -
Since taking office in 2021, Richer -- who describes himself as a "life-long conservative" -- has transformed from a low-profile public servant into something of a national figure.
He has used his social media accounts and press appearances to knock down an endless stream of claims questioning President Joe Biden's win over Trump in historically conservative Arizona.
Before Richer was elected Maricopa County recorder, responsible for overseeing voter rolls and early voting, he worked at right-leaning groups such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society.
But his forceful rejection of election lies has put him squarely at odds with fellow Republicans such as Trump and Lake, who have repeatedly amplified allegations of fraud and pressured Arizona officials to overturn the state's results.
"I get to have a front-row seat in this very important conversation," Richer said. "There are some days when it's just like, I wish I was in the bleachers."
Lake, a former TV news anchor, filed multiple lawsuits after her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs, none of which held up in court.
Richer sued Lake after she claimed he and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which oversees voting on Election Day, injected 300,000 bogus ballots into the contest.
She declined to defend those statements in March, effectively conceding the defamation case.
"By participating in this lawsuit, it would only serve to legitimize this perversion of our legal system and allow bad actors to interfere in our upcoming election," Lake said in a video posted on X.
Richer said the lawsuit was "a bit of a last measure," inspired in part by defamation cases related to the 2020 election -- including the nearly $800 million Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems after the network aired false claims about the software company.
"Filing a lawsuit is not fun," he said. "But how is it going to stop otherwise?"
- 'You’re a coward' -
Biden won Arizona by some 10,000 votes, triggering a slew of recounts that all affirmed his victory -- including a partisan review ordered by the Republican-controlled state Senate.
The 2021 audit in Maricopa County, which has 2.4 million active registered voters, led by the now-defunct firm Cyber Ninjas spawned the most outlandish conspiracy theory Richer has confronted thus far.
"There was a fire at a farm for one of the supervisors. And so the allegation is that we shredded ballots from the 2020 election and then fed them to chickens, and then we incinerated 80,000 chickens," he said.
Richer and independent fact-checkers debunked the claims, but they gained traction anyway.
An Iowa man was later sentenced to prison for threatening county Supervisor Clint Hickman's life.
Richer has also continued to receive threats, including some targeting his wife. A Maricopa County Republican leader was recently caught on video saying she "would lynch" Richer, who is Jewish.
Because of all this, the election center has been fortified with an iron fence, uses access badges and has cameras livestreaming around the clock.
Undeterred, Richer ran for reelection this summer, only to lose to a Republican primary challenger who has previously floated concerns about election integrity and fraud.
"There is a lot of that, a lot of hemming and hawing -- especially if you're a Republican these days," Richer said.
"You're a coward if you can't look your constituents in the eye and tell them what you know to be the truth."