Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, speaks at a campaign event in Arizona.Ross D. Franklin/AP

When Tim Stringham Arriving at a “Veterans for Harris” campaign launch Sunday at a Phoenix mall alongside Sen. Mark Kelly and Rep. Ted Lieu of California, the 35-year-old first-time candidate took a moment to acknowledge the evidence.

“You know these are strange times when the candidate for rapporteur can come here and speak with a US senator and a US congressman,” he told the 30 or so volunteers who had gathered in the narrow room for the start of a critical session. afternoon knocking on doors.

Stringham, a former JAG attorney, is the Democratic nominee for Maricopa County recorder, an office responsible for maintaining voter rolls and mailing ballots in a county of more than 4 million people. In a normal year, this is one of those vital but mostly anonymous jobs, like evaluator or auditor, that voters are only aware of – if they are aware of it at all. ‘from road signs. But Maricopa’s election, as Kelly pointed out moments later, hasn’t been normal for quite a while. The fight for one Few down-and-out races like Stringham’s will determine the future of the democratic process in a county that in recent years has become ground zero for election denial.

“Before I talk about the presidential election, I want to talk about the county recorder race,” the former astronaut told Phoenix canvassers. “The guy we had, Steve Richer, the Republican, did a fantastic job. And nothing against Tim here… but he did a really good job, and we actually owe him a lot. He may have somehow saved democracy.

Stephen Richer, as I reported for a recent history and a episode of Revealhas drawn national praise for standing up to election deniers in the aftermath of the 2020 and 2022 elections while working to assert his rights. the county’s voting process more transparent. But he was vilified by members of his party, including the 2022 Republican gubernatorial candidate — and 2024 U.S. Senate candidate — MAGA loyalist. Kari Lake, who blamed him for their losses that year. In July, right-wing Rep. Justin Heap defeated Richer easily in primary school. Although Heap did not state outright that he believed this recent election was stolen, he welcomed the support of Lake and other prominent election deniers.

“He lost to a right-wing MAGA sycophant for Donald Trump,” Kelly told volunteers preparing to knock on doors. Stringham “has to win – make sure you tell them it’s really important that they get to that part of the ballot where they vote for Tim.” Otherwise, we might have a problem here, once we reach the point where people are sworn in for these positions.

And it’s not just about the race for records. Nearby, at another canvassing event Sunday, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs helped turn out Daniel Valenzuela, a former firefighter running for the Maricopa Board of Supervisors. The Republican-controlled board, which is essentially the county’s governing board, “takes care of over 50 business lines,” Valenzuela said, ranging from education to public safety. But board members have drawn ire from the far right for their handling of elections, where they are responsible for voting and counting on Election Day. Two Republican supervisors who drew the ire of election deniers for certifying the last two elections, Bill Gates and Clint Hickman, have chosen to retire this year. Another, Jack Sellers, was defeated in his primary by an election denier.

“I mean, they’re solid supervisors, regardless of party, sensible supervisors,” Valenzuela told me. “Two of them decided not to run for office, and one of them lost in the primary, and it wasn’t close. And so, what is the common thread? He was now running for Gates’ old seat, in part to counter anti-democratic impulses from the right.

With just days until Election Day, Stringham had more or less stopped trying to find and persuade undecided voters. and was trying to track down known supporters and Democrats who hadn’t yet voted, to remind them of the importance of selecting candidates for each option on the county’s two-page ballot. But reaching crossover voters was an important part of his campaign, as it has been for every Democrat who has won statewide or Maricopa County elections in recent years. And Stringham believes defending the election process in Maricopa is a winning issue.

“I think the truth is that most Arizonans actually like our election system,” he said. “We get a lot of complaints about things like slow mail or, ‘Why hasn’t my ballot arrived yet?’ There’s really not a lot of people saying, “We want mail-in voting gone.” It really doesn’t exist.

His comments were a dig at Heap, who joined Republicans in the Legislature in a unsuccessful effort do exactly that. How can Stringham say his argument resonates? Republicans seemed to be trying to avoid the refusal of elections as a campaign issue in the home stretch.

“Turning Point is currently encouraging everyone to vote early,” he said, referring to the political action committee founded by Charlie Kirk, responsible for much of the Trump campaign. ground game in the state. “They are doing the same thing we are: stealing ballots. So they believe in the system, right?

Stringham believed that the Republican Party had realized that “its strategy of refusing elections had failed and they were trying to move away from it.” He stressed that they were avoiding any questions about the refusal of elections and that this topic had been abandoned as a topic of discussion. His opponent is a perfect example of this new dynamic. “Not only did he vote early, but he’s literally texting saying he’s showing up to vote in the election. boring. He has just taken up Richer’s slogan! » said Stringham. “So they’re kind of trying to forget the world that’s happened in the last two, three, four years.”

This does not mean that election deniers have given up. Lake is still appealing his loss in the 2022 gubernatorial race. In fact, the state Supreme Court will review his arguments in that case. November 6. There is no shortage of “Stop the Steal” candidates on the ballot, and Republicans are laying the groundwork to challenge the results across the country if Trump fails once again. But Stringham was right. For now, at least, Republican leaders are trying to get their voters to trust the process, not reject it.

At a Trump rally Saturday in Scottsdale, Charlie Kirk leaned into the message that Republicans control their own destiny. All they had to do was “hunt” the 400,000 Republican ballots that had not yet been returned. At one point, he asked people in the crowd to take a look at the small, hangar-like space in which he was speaking. “This seating section here can accommodate about 280 people,” he said. “Our attorney general in this state became attorney general by 280 votes. And there were 200,000 Republicans who got ballots without submitting them in the midterm elections.”

Democratic AG Kris Mayes drew boos from the crowd when Kirk mentioned her recent announcement that she was directing her criminal division to investigate Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney. “She’s trying to investigate Donald Trump’s speech, but you know what? It is OUR fault, no her fault, because we did not participate in the vote,” he said. “We could have easily found 300 more votes. We could easily have found 400 more votes. It’s easy to complain, but we can only complain if we collapse at the finish line, everyone.

There was the usual debate about making the election, as Donald Trump Jr. put it, “too important to rig.” But on an individual level, the voters I spoke with felt encouraged by their experience with the system. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that almost everyone voted by mail, something Republicans like Kirk have been adamantly insisting on since 2022 — contrary to Trump’s past claims that it was simply a way for Democrats to steal the election. Some of them said they were encouraged by text message alerts they received from the county recorder’s office, which, by countynotifies voters when their ballot has been “prepared, mailed, received, verified and counted.” Another benefit of early voting is that voters were spared Election Day issues like overheating printers or long lines, which Republicans have cited in the past as evidence of a conspiracy against them.

Here again, there is perhaps a simpler reason to explain this sudden sunshine of the process: the most recent polls give Donald Trump the advantage in the state. If these results are confirmed, no one will need to conjure up conspiracy theories to explain the results – they will happily accept them.