‘I hope you get cancer’: Election worker, a dangerous job in the United States

This season’s most experimental “movie” in the swing state of Arizona is the 24/7 webcast of early vote count in Maricopa County. It’s a production that might remind one of Gene Hackman’s line in Night Moves: “like watching paint dry.” The film’s cast — dozens of election workers — spend their days sitting in bipartisan pairs, inspecting defective ballots that the high-tech counting machines couldn’t process. Occasionally, a technician steps in to open and clean the machine. Around noon, the workers — prohibited from having cell phones or food and drink in the lounge — take turns going out for lunch or a cigarette. It’s the most exciting time of the day.

In a bid for transparency, Maricopa County officials — serving a population of about 4.5 million in the fastest-growing district in the U.S. — set up cameras to broadcast the vote count, a kind of ode to boredom. In 2020, the Phoenix-based building became ground zero for Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” — he falsely claimed that the election had been rigged after he lost this crucial state by just over 10,000 votes. It was the first time that Arizona had elected a Democratic president since Bill Clinton in 1996, turning a state that had been reliably red since 1948 under Harry Truman.

Disbelieving supporters of the outgoing president — many of them armed — gathered outside the building following the 2020 election, led by figures from the sprawling American conspiracy sphere, including broadcaster Alex Jones. The scene became a global symbol of a movement that rejected the election results, spreading to other closely contested states where Joe Biden also won narrowly, like Wisconsin and Georgia.

Trump’s campaign filed numerous lawsuits to overturn the results, yet no judge ruled in his favor. In Arizona, these legal battles stretched on for over six months. In an unprecedented move, 11 Republican “fake electors” convened in emergency session, awarding Arizona’s electoral votes to Trump even before the official count concluded three weeks after the election. These individuals are still awaiting trial, scheduled for 2026, although the Republican-majority state Congress has recently passed a law that could exempt them from prosecution.

Some election workers whose names were posted online faced threats, a situation that worsened in the 2022 midterms, when Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, after her loss, also alleged fraud. The situation was exacerbated by technical issues on Election Day, as dozens of ballot-processing machines malfunctioned, disrupting voting in certain counties.

There is no guarantee that November 5 — the day of the most hotly contested election in recent memory, in which Kari Lake is running again, this time for the Senate — will unfold any differently. However, “they have installed a metal fence to restrict access to the parking lot,” explained Adrian Borunda, spokesman for the Maricopa County Elections Department, during a visit to the facilities last week. On Election Day, security will be heightened with the deployment of snipers stationed in the building where the votes are counted and on the surrounding rooftops.

The counting center in Maricopa County has remained open throughout the year for anyone wishing to witness the transparency of the process firsthand. Stephen Richer, who oversees the Maricopa election process as the county recorder, estimates that he has held “about 80 meetings” with voters to explain the procedures. Richer, who has faced scrutiny from election deniers for years, lost the Republican primary last July and is not seeking re-election next week.

Bill Gates, perhaps Arizona’s most famous public servant, will also be stepping down, though his decision is personal. Last year, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to the threats he received, and he decided to prioritize his health and family’s peace of mind over the “civic commitment” that motivated him to serve in government as a Republican representative since 2009. Moving forward, he announced last week in an interview from his office — boasting stunning views of Phoenix — that he will be working at Arizona State University in a “laboratory on democratic mechanisms.”

After holding various government roles, Gates — who founded a group of Teen Republicans during high school — won the election for Maricopa County supervisor in 2016, narrowly securing re-election four years later. “I never imagined what that close victory would mean for me personally,” he said. Among other disturbing incidents, Gates has received written messages and phone calls from people telling him things like “I hope you get cancer.” The callers have threatened to rape his daughter and to execute him by firing squad. “One guy sent me a letter saying he knew where I lived, where I bought my food, and that he could poison it to kill me without leaving a trace. It was a very specific message — extremely frightening,” Gates recalled. A judge sentenced this individual to three years of probation a few months ago.

Following the 2022 election, Gates’ wife encouraged him to seek medical help because she noticed he was “more irritable than usual” and seemed “depressed.” That was when he was diagnosed with PTSD.

Early voting in Arizona began on October 9, and Gates expresses concern that some individuals have already started spreading “the poison of electoral theft.” “They can watch the live stream from the counting center for hours and find suspicions where there are none. I don’t blame those who believe these lies; most are good people, but they are intoxicated by misinformation. I hope everything remains confined to a few ugly words and does not escalate into physical violence,” said Gates. The dissemination of these false allegations, often reiterated by Trump at his rallies, has been fueled by the documentary 2000 Mules (2022), even though the courts have dismissed its claims.

On the day of the EL PAÍS interview, a press conference was scheduled to reinforce the transparency of the process, followed by a media visit to the counting facilities the next day. “We are doing everything possible to instill confidence among voters, but we know that we won’t be able to convince everyone. We’re prepared for that,” Borunda admitted from behind the glass separating the internet-free room where officials count the ballots.

A visit to a polling station at a community center in Scottsdale, a city next to Phoenix, revealed that not all voters are inclined to trust the system. In the queue to cast their ballots, a lively discussion erupted, with Brian (“That’s all the information you’re going to get from me,” he warned) taking the lead, alongside a woman named Sandy Barrett-Jackson. Brian claimed that “a friend of his” had seen a vote for Kamala Harris counted three times, although he had no proof to support this assertion.

“Election is being stolen right now”

“The election is being stolen right now, as we speak,” said Brian. When asked about the polls that appeared more favorable for Trump last week, he responded, “It’s all a trick to tell us, ‘Oh, we won by a hair.’ They’ll claim that Harris received 81 million votes compared to Trump’s 79 million. You’ll see. Arizona is a deeply Republican state; how can it be that all of a sudden, the Democrats are winning again and again? It doesn’t make sense. The pandemic [which led to the extension of early voting for health reasons] gave them the opportunity to start cheating on a massive scale.”

Barrett-Jackson, who arrived with a ballot “filled out at home” — Arizona’s ballot is two pages long and includes votes for 79 offices, including the presidency — recalled a meme of a ballot box in a cemetery, poking fun at the alleged Democratic practice of getting the deceased to vote. Both Barrett-Jackson and Brian called for a return to in-person voting on Election Day and urged for stricter voter identification requirements.

At another election office in downtown Phoenix, an official — who requested to remain anonymous due to legal restrictions on speaking to the press — said that since early voting began, there had been no incidents “except for those attempting to influence voters with strange theories.” “I’ve had to remove some people who were speaking to citizens where they shouldn’t have been,” he explained.

Arizona regulations prohibit either party from campaigning and photographs being taken within 25 meters of the polling station. That morning, a group of individuals wearing green shirts was spotted a little further away, intercepting university students. Their purpose was unclear, and efforts to identify who sent them were unfruitful; they initially sought out the supervisor, who quickly left upon seeing the press credentials.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has been training an army of “poll watchers” across the country for months. According to polls, two-thirds of Republicans believe that Biden stole the 2020 election. These thousands of volunteers are being prepared to monitor a process they distrust. “Once an election is certified, there’s nothing you can do,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said on a right-wing podcast in early October. “We’ll be there before, during, and after the vote to ensure everything is in order.”

In Georgia — where Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani was fined $148 million for defaming a mother and daughter by falsely claiming the two election workers were committing fraud — panic buttons have been made accessible to election employees.

In Wisconsin — another swing state — election workers have been trained in “conflict de-escalation” techniques to help them handle potentially distrustful voters. These are the new realities of a role that was once unremarkable but has been transformed by conspiracy theorists into one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States.

Michael Mirer — one of the volunteers scheduled to count votes on November 5 in a Milwaukee suburb — explained in a recent interview that he signed up for this task to gain insight into how the system operates from the inside. He concluded that the “process is clean.” “Each vote can be traced from its origin to the end,” he said. Mirer also addressed one of the latest conspiracy theories circulating within Trumpism, which claims that undocumented immigrants vote (predominantly for Democrats), despite laws prohibiting such actions. “It’s hard to believe that someone in that situation would risk committing a federal crime that could land them in prison for decades,” he said.

In the days following the 2020 election, Gates — the Maricopa County supervisor — received a voicemail from Giuliani demanding that he hand over all ballots and counting machines. He chose not to return that call. Now, four years later, such pressure has led him to resign from his position. However, he has no intention of leaving the Republican Party: “I will not allow myself to be driven out by those who currently dominate it. I look forward to the day when we return to the principles for which I decided to become a Republican: individual autonomy, a free market, and the defense of the rule of law.” “Promoting paranoia,” he added, did not use to be one of those principles.

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