How Arizona is preparing to combat election denialism and conspiracy theories

Arizona became a hotbed of election conspiracies after former President Trump spread lies about the state’s handling of the 2020 vote count. Now, election officials in this key battleground are preparing for round two. White House Correspondent Laura Barrón-López reports from Phoenix.
Geoff Bennett:
Meanwhile, today, the Justice Department announced developments in four cases involving domestic threats to election workers. Two individuals pleaded guilty or were sentenced to prison time for threatening election officials in Arizona, a state that became a hotbed of conspiracies after former President Donald Trump spread lies about the 2020 election results there.
Now, in 2024, election officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, are preparing for round two.
Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, has this report from Phoenix, Arizona.
Stephen Richer (R), Maricopa County, Arizona, Recorder: Those are the high-speed Dominion tabulators.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Stephen Richer is ready for this election.
Stephen Richer:
The average Maricopa County ballot will have about 80 contests on it.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
The Maricopa County recorder, who runs mail-in voting and maintains voter registration, says he’s ready for processing two million absentee ballots and for signature verification. But he’s also ready for the backlash.
Stephen Richer:
We’re very aware of the fact that Arizona could be one of the, if not the last state waiting to be called. And if you say it’s all coming down to Arizona, then you can bet that whatever emotion was already baked into the equation is going to be increased magnitude.
So this is our main lobby.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Since 2020, Richer, a Republican himself, has faced an onslaught from his own party, undermining his office and trust in each election.
Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: It is clear in Arizona that they must decertify the election. You heard the numbers.
(Cheering)
Donald Trump:
And those responsible for wrongdoing must be held accountable.
Stephen Richer:
We seem to be caught in a bit of a doom loop where politicians feed these lies to voters, and so then it creates a feedback loop to politicians incentivizing them to keep doing it.
Protester:
Count the legal votes!
Protesters:
Count the legal votes!
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Arizona became ground zero for election denialism in 2020.
Man:
We saw a coup being attempted in America.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Republicans led by former President Donald Trump spread baseless conspiracies around the accuracy of voting machines and lengthy vote counts. Election officials faced death threats and intimidation.
Trump allies falsely claimed to be Arizona’s electors in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential results. Then, the state’s Republican-controlled Senate seized voting equipment in 2021 and ordered a forensic audit of the 2020 election. But it found no significant discrepancies, reaffirming Joe Biden’s victory.
Now Donald Trump’s leading conspiracy theory is that Democrats are signing up noncitizens to vote in the election.
Donald Trump:
Our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote.
Stephen Richer:
In Arizona, we have a lot of safeguards to ensure that doesn’t happen on any sort of significant scale. We not only require somebody to be a United States citizen, but to vote a full ballot in Arizona, you have to provide documented proof of citizenship.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
In your time as recorder, have you ever found a noncitizen that actually cast a ballot?
Stephen Richer:
Actually cast a ballot? No. I have found noncitizens who have registered to vote. I don’t know that I have found a single one of a noncitizen who actually voted.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Given the wealth of disinformation around the 2024 election, Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has spent much of this cycle trying to prepare for the worst.
Adrian Fontes (D), Arizona Secretary of State: I’m concerned about any conspiracy theories that are peddled by candidates and elected officials. It’s sort of like Whac-A-Mole for conspiracy theories. So if it is right now that the mythology of noncitizen voting is going to be the conspiracy theory du jour, then so be it. We will deal with that.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Fontes sees his office’s slow-rolling civics lesson as a dent in the election conspiracy mill.
Adrian Fontes:
I think folks now are starting to realize the checks and balances, the security, the accountability and the transparency of our systems can be depended on. And I think that’s why a lot of this election denialism is waning and becoming much less popular than it was in years past.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
But election deniers are back on the ballot this November.
Kari Lake (R), Arizona Senatorial Candidate: Oh, my goodness, do we love this man?
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Kari Lake, a Trump ally who lost the 2022 gubernatorial race, is running for Arizona’s open seat in the U.S. Senate.
Lake repeatedly spread lies that both the 2020 election and her last race were stolen.
Kari Lake:
People cannot take this level of fraud much longer.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Lake is one of eight election deniers running for Congress, either for reelection or for the first time in Arizona this November.
And throughout the state, a number of influential Republicans are still convinced that the 2020 election was rigged.
Craig Berland is chair of the Maricopa County Republican Committee. He believes that mail-in ballots are a problem.
Craig Berland, Chair, Maricopa County, Arizona, Republican Committee:
We have to decide whether we want to trade our freedom for convenience or not. And the mail-in ballots cause a detriment into our freedom. But we also have the issue now because we’re a border state of the illegals crossing the border and being registered to vote and the mail-in ballots.
And it all combines into an issue that just keeps us up at night.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Berland’s basis for his distrust comes from the widely debunked conspiracy that Maricopa County counted 200,000 mail-in ballots with mismatching signatures in the 2020 election.
So do you think that the elections that have happened, all the elections that have happened since 2020, be them the state level, local level, that they are not fair and accurate?
Craig Berland:
Since 2020? I would have to agree with that. I don’t have evidence that would support not being the case. I don’t see that — being involved at the level I am, I don’t see that anything has changed.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
So do you think that 2024 is being rigged as well? Because Donald Trump is saying that it is.
Craig Berland:
I don’t have any reason to believe it’s not.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
But you don’t have any evidence that it is.
Craig Berland:
Well, it’s — nothing’s changed, right? We’re still doing massive mail-in ballots.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Berland’s claims, including that of noncitizens voting, have been refuted and rebuked by the Republican-led Maricopa Board of Supervisors, who run the county’s election.
Bill Gates (R), Chairman, Maricopa County, Arizona, Board of Supervisors: For members of our own party to turn around to question our integrity, to question our commitment not only to the Republican Party, but to this country, it’s been incredibly hurtful, and, frankly, it’s been traumatic.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Bill Gates, the board’s chairman, had to seek help for PTSD after threats and harassment in 2020, and he spent the last four years trying to systematically disprove many of the allegations of fraud in the county.
Bill Gates:
To still be here is incredibly frustrating, but we feel like the more information that we can provide to people, the more access we can give them to our elections facility, the more likely we are that we can change people’s hearts and minds. We know that it’s not easy, because we know that, unfortunately, people have been fed lies about our election system now for literally four years.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
For Stephen Richer, this November will be his last as the Maricopa County recorder. Earlier this year, he lost his primary to Justin Heap, a state representative who has refused to answer whether he believes the 2020 election was stolen, instead calling the Maricopa County’s elections a laughingstock on social media.
What do you think that says about the state of the Republican Party in Arizona?
Stephen Richer:
One of the cornerstones of being a good member of good standing in Donald Trump’s Republican Party is that you give credence to the idea that the 2020 election was stolen.
And so I have always pushed back against that. That might have been to my disadvantage politically, but it was the right thing to do. And so I hope that whoever comes next can think about the future, rather than thinking about past presidential elections.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Laura Barron-Lopez in Phoenix, Arizona.