Maricopa County Oversight Board Chairman Bill Gates provided an update on the counting of the ballot during a press conference at the Maricopa County Registrar’s Office in Phoenix on Thursday, November 10, 2022.
Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press
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Maricopa County Oversight Board Chairman Bill Gates provided an update on the counting of the ballot during a press conference at the Maricopa County Registrar’s Office in Phoenix on Thursday, November 10, 2022.
Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press
PHOENIX — Maricopa County Mayor Bill Gates has said for the first time that he is in a strange position.
A longtime Republican activist and former election attorney for the Arizona Republican Party, he is now the target of violent and other intimidation by far-right extremists.
“This is not about partisan politics. It’s not about conservatives versus liberals. It’s about truth versus lies,” Gates told NPR.
“Given my background, all the Republican clubs I’ve started, and what I’ve done on behalf of the Republican Party to keep elections from being rigged, I don’t think I’ve ever been attacked by my own party members,” he said. I can’t believe there is.” Republican Party. “
The drama began when President Biden narrowly won Maricopa County and Arizona in 2020 and continues today.
For Gates, the chain of deceit follows a similar pattern: Arizona law prevents most mail-in ballots from being processed and counted until Election Day, but election officials must count all votes on election night. It began with the debunked claim that it could and should. rear.
Mr. Gates held press conferences twice in the week ending Tuesday, announcing that and other notable misinformation ahead of time. He and other election officials repeatedly raised and then refuted misinformation circulating on social media and elsewhere.
“Part of the reason it takes days for all the votes to be tallied here is because of the mail-in ballots we have,” Gates told reporters last week.
Maricopa County Tally and Election Center Security Increased in Phoenix
Kirk Siegler/NPR
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Maricopa County Tally and Election Center Security Increased in Phoenix
Kirk Siegler/NPR
Fight back against mistrust
Arizona was one of the first states to introduce mail-in ballots and early voting in the 1990s, an initiative widely supported by Republicans at the time. Now far-right activists in parties here and around the country claim, without evidence, that the same process is vulnerable to fraud.
Gates has been largely praised by Democrats and independents for handling the election well in the face of attacks from his own party.
More ballots were cast in the Phoenix area on Election Day, and some voting machines were temporarily rejecting ballots after what was later discovered to be a printer problem.
“No wonder people don’t trust the system. It just adds fuel to the fire,” said Georgiana Hawes outside the Phoenix polling place where she said her ballot was first rejected. .
She cast a new ballot in person and was told it would be counted at the Maricopa County Counting and Election Center that evening. But Hawes, a longtime conservative voter, saw it as another example of possible fraud.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I just want to know my vote count,” Hawes said.
The issue was resolved on Tuesday afternoon and ultimately affected 17,000 of the more than 1.6 million votes cast in Maricopa.
But as county technocrats repeatedly stepped in front of television cameras and quickly took to social media to explain what happened and patiently answer questions, radicals sought to use the glitch to sow suspicion. efforts never materialized.
They often took reporters to warehouses to watch Democrat and Republican poll workers unload ballots, and they live-streamed or videotaped ballots being counted and processed. posted.
One big difference compared to 2020, however, is the predominance of police in the outdoors.
A spotlighted helicopter flew over Tuesday night as dozens of policemen patrolled the streets around the center on horseback.
The center itself is like a fortress. A newly installed permanent black safety fence surrounds its immediate perimeter. A line of police SUVs is buffered from a temporary chain link fence along the street, where only a few election protesters usually stand.
Even Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone is outraged at the need to strengthen voting facilities so much. Although a sign of the times, he thinks it doesn’t represent American values.
“This is not a reflection of that,” Penzone said in an interview. “This kind of action basically needs to make this a near-military zone of law enforcement to protect the ballots and the people and the opportunity to vote in a free and thoughtful nation.”
Maricopa County, once strongly Republican, has turned blue and won by a narrow margin in recent elections.
It’s no coincidence that Gates is the head of the anti-theft movement here.
“There are many people out there who have decided to push that lie and spread misinformation in the direction of the Maricopa County election. [so] important and true if not of Swing county in this country,” Gates said.
He and other election officials have been consistently targeted with death threats since 2020, but he says he hasn’t backed down.
“What really gives me energy is all the workers here, 3,000 workers trying to do the right thing. They chose to work in election administration,” he said. . “It’s so noble, but so under attack.”
