Preparing for the worst has become the leading strategy for Arizona election officials since 2020
The room sits behind a chain-link fence, then black wrought-iron gates. Guards block the entrance, which requires a security badge to access. The glass surrounding it is shatterproof. What merits all these layers of protection is somewhat surprising: tabulating machines that count the votes during elections in Arizona’s Maricopa County.
Fontes, a Marine Corps veteran, has brought his military mindset to the office since he started last year. He has deployed “tiger teams” to troubleshoot problems and hosted simulations to prepare workers for AI-generated disinformation. He has created a four-person information security team that bolsters defenses against cyberattacks and gathers intelligence on election-related threats, which descend on Arizona from near and far.
Fontes and Richer say one of the toughest challenges of misinformation is the doubt created among large swaths of voters. Jane Carter, a 62-year-old property manager, is one of them. A Republican, she said she doesn’t have faith in election officials. “I don’t have a lot of confidence in anybody that’s doing anything, really,” she said after dropping off her ballot on a sunny afternoon in early March.
Turning around public perception is proving to be an uphill battle in the county where election lies have proliferated even after a Republican-led audit and other post-election reviews found no evidence of widespread fraud or inaccurate results in the 2020 vote. In the recent presidential primary, Richer noticed a conservative activist complaining on X about receiving two mailed ballots.