Maricopa County is home to Arizona State University, premier urban hiking destination Camelback Mountain, and major sports teams like the Phoenix Suns. These days, though, the region is perhaps best known as a scalding-hot cauldron of electoral alchemy, where far-right conspiracy theories are conjured but not contained.

In the lead-up to this year’s midterms, Maricopa County has already produced multiple discrete panics over alleged interference. Earlier this month, conservative watchdog group We the People USA Alliance shared security-camera footage showing two county employees working at a ballot tabulation center after hours, and suggested they’d been caught red-handed tampering with election equipment. (In fact, according to county officials, those employees were merely working late on a routine software update ahead of a holiday weekend.)

Just a week earlier, Runbeck Election Services, a private company contracted to print and mail ballots for Maricopa County, mistakenly sent out 3,126 early-ballot packets six days ahead of schedule. Although county officials determined the ballots were still valid, President Donald Trump called Maricopa County “very, very dishonest,” refusing to accept the explanation that the premature mailing was simply an error. 

These are just the latest examples of fraud allegations in the area stemming from perfectly explicable incidents—or fabricated out of whole cloth. It’s a shameful tradition that stretches back to the 2020 election, and sticks around as persistently as a hanging chad. While elections in Maricopa County have reliably inspired conspiracy theories and investigations that never turn up anything resembling a smoking gun, that hasn’t stopped lawmakers and conservative activists in other states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin , from copying the playbook.

Source link