Updated on July 10, 2024 at 8:00 AM ET

PHOENIX — Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to nearly 60% of the swing state’s voters, will once again be in the spotlight in this fall’s general election.

Since 2020, the spotlight has been on rampant conspiracy theory About the election — including from He is the state’s leading Republican Senate candidate this year.

And for the past four years, Maricopa County election officials have been at the forefront of efforts to provide accurate information about the voting experience, how votes are counted, when results are announced, and to counter unsubstantiated claims.

State law doesn’t make any major changes to how elections are conducted, but county officials are planning a number of changes this year to improve election administration and prevent new conspiracy theories from sprouting.

For example, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has appropriated $9 million to purchase new printers to replace older models. It struggled to properly print about 17,000 ballots for Election Day 2022. -and, Unsubstantiated allegations of fraud.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer’s office, which is in charge of early voting by mail, also added more steps and audit cues as part of signature verification. This is the process used to verify that the mail-in ballot was submitted by the voter to whom it was mailed. .

“Some of it isn’t about speed,” Richer said. “Part of that was the goal of increasing integrity, increasing oversight, increasing oversight, increasing documentation.”

But this year, he added more staff to verify those signatures, which he hopes will allow the county to report more results faster. That required building a modular facility at the county election headquarters over the past two years.

“The previous limitation was a space limitation; there just wasn’t enough space for more people to do signature verification,” Richer said.

Immediately after Election Day, it is critical to increase the number of staff verifying signatures. The polling place will be responsible for processing potentially hundreds of thousands of so-called “late early” ballots, or mail-in ballots that voters don’t return until the previous weekend. , or Election Day.

“The more people who address this issue, the faster counties will be able to report election results, and the faster news organizations will be able to predict close races,” Richer said.

But there’s one thing Richer and other election officials can’t control. That’s how narrowly Arizona’s districts are divided between Republican and Democratic candidates.

In 2020, Joe Biden led Arizona by about 10,000 votes. After a recount, the 2022 election for state attorney general was decided by just 280 votes.

That’s why Richer is also in the business of managing expectations.

This year’s mail-in ballots come with an information sheet co-authored by Richer and county commissioners that explains how to count and vote. The role of the media in determining the winner In some races, this happens before all votes are counted.

This information helps voters understand why races are sometimes too close to be decided by poll results.

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Maricopa County has become a hotspot for false claims and threats

While Richer and other officials have tweaked protocols and procedures, nothing fundamentally has changed for voters.

“Election laws are governed by state law, and state law has not changed substantively,” Richer said. “So the voter experience is going to be very similar.”

Early ballots for the state’s primary election were mailed last week to voters who registered to receive them.

For the remainder of the month, voters must complete and return early ballots by mail or at polling places and mailboxes located throughout Maricopa County.

Those who wish to vote in person can vote early at polling places currently open in Maricopa County.

Alternatively, you can always wait until Election Day, July 30, to vote.

“For decades in Arizona and Maricopa County, voters literally had a lot of choices,” said Tammy Patrick, program CEO of the National Association of Election Officials and former Maricopa County employee.

“Not much changed in 2024 because we were already doing what are known as best practices to ensure our election systems are safe, secure and accessible,” she said. added.

Perhaps the biggest difference is the lives of election workers like Richer, who have spent the past four years under the microscope while running elections in the nation’s third-largest voting jurisdiction, smaller than Los Angeles and Harris counties. It will be there. Texas County.

“As long as that’s been said and done, it’s been said and done in Maricopa County,” Richer said. “A lot of these conversations seem to revolve around us, so I think the team is used to that as well.”

Ritchie himself is no stranger to these awful conversations.

Republicans seeking re-election will face challengers in the July 30 Republican primary. Faced with calls for lynching in newly discovered video.

This is not the first time he has been threatened. In 2022, federal prosecutors Missouri man charged with threatening to kill Richer After criticizing Republicans for conducting a highly flawed investigation into the 2020 Maricopa County presidential election. “There were a lot of other origins” at the time, Richer said.

“You have to have a strong stomach to work in this field,” Richer recently told NPR.

And just last month, a new round of intrigue sparked when a temporary election worker was arrested on suspicion of stealing election equipment. Security keys quickly identified and recovered as missing.

“I hope people don’t take this to create another conspiracy theory,” Republican Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates told reporters at a press conference in June. “But that’s exactly why the sheriff and I are here today to answer these questions and address this issue and to let people know that frankly our protocols worked. I’m here.”

Arizona is expected to have a close election this fall.

“The closer the race gets, the more scrutiny there is, the more attention and pressure,” Patrick told NPR.

It’s a burden Maricopa County has carried in each of the past two election cycles, she says, and one it should expect to continue carrying for the foreseeable future.

Patrick says it’s just like sports. “If I’m watching a game and it gets loud, I change the channel to watch something else.”

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