Threats against election officials unlikely to stop, Maricopa County recorder says

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer questions county election officials during a hearing before the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Maricopa County Elections Department officials were responding to claims about the 2020 general election made by Senate Republican contractors Cyber Ninjas, Cyfir and EchoMail.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer questions county election officials during a hearing before the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Maricopa County Elections Department officials were responding to claims about the 2020 general election made by Senate Republican contractors Cyber Ninjas, Cyfir and EchoMail.

The state’s top elections official received a death threat last year. It wasn’t the first, and he fears it won’t be the last.

On Tuesday, 50-year-old Missouri resident Walter Lee Hoornstra was indicted on suspicion of sending a threatening voicemail to Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer in May 2021. In it, Hoornstra warned Richer to stop speaking out against the Arizona Senate audit, or Richer would “never make it to (his) next little board meeting,” according to the indictment.

Previous coverage: Missouri man indicted after threatening voicemail was left for Maricopa County Recorder

Baseless claims that fraud occurred during the 2020 election sowed mistrust among voters, and election officials have borne the brunt of their vitriol. Across the country, election officials have resigned after dealing with relentless harassment. Richer estimates that he’s received thousands of hateful messages during his tenure since January 2021. So many that the threat from Hoornstra, at that point, wasn’t enough to cancel meetings or give him pause.

“This would’ve been one of a deluge of voicemails, emails and social media messages at this time,” Richer said Thursday in an interview with The Arizona Republic.

Allegations from the Arizona Senate audit inspired many of the messages, Richer said. Hoornstra’s voicemail came after the audit’s Twitter account falsely accused election officials of deleting electronic databases, Richer said. In fact, contractors had simply been looking in the wrong place for the information.

The spread of inflammatory misinformation about election integrity invariably leads to a spike in harassment, Richer said.

“We would see an uptick in vitriol correspondence, and thinly veiled threats whenever they would make some sort of comment like that,” he said.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer speaks during a news conference addressing upcoming election security, at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office headquarters in Phoenix on July 20, 2022.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer speaks during a news conference addressing upcoming election security, at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office headquarters in Phoenix on July 20, 2022.

Despite the audit’s end, and its various debunkings, hateful messages from the public continue, latching on to new conspiracy theories, like those forwarded by the ‘2000 Mules’ documentary.

Debunked: Arizona Capitol event with '2000 Mules' filmmakers was long on claims, short on evidence

“Now, more recently, most of them have moved on from the Cyber Ninjas and other schemes,” Richer said. “When the silly documentary about mules came out we received a lot of communications at that point as well.”

While Richer is the public face of elections in Maricopa County, he is not alone in receiving threats. The most upsetting messages for him are those that are focused on unmasking and intimidating non-public election workers.

“Wherein it disappoints me is in respect to some of the videos when some of these antagonists — some of these malcontents — take the initiative to try to identify some of our people, name them, cook up alleged wrongs that these people are doing and then say horrible things about them,” he said.

He fears the continued negative climate election officials deal with will have a chilling effect on hiring and retention. Richer pointed to the resignation of an entire elections department in a Texas county last week as evidence that voter harassment is taking a toll on the career.

“I just don’t think people should be making professional work decisions under threat because it could have an effect,” he said.

Arizona is no stranger to resignations among its elections officials. In July  the county recorder and elections director in Yavapai County left their posts after a year and a half of heated harassment.

Richer says he has no plans to resign and remains committed to his work despite the likelihood threats will continue.

“I wish this were the last of it, but I strongly doubt that will be the case,” he said.

Reach criminal justice reporter Gloria Rebecca Gomez at grgomez@gannett.com or on Twitter @glorihuh.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer talks threats, voter vitriol