Stephen Richer is a one-man embodiment of the anguish and despair that lies at the heart of traditional Republicanism.
Long a GOP supporter and elected official in charge of running the voting process in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county, he now finds himself very much out of step with the direction his party has taken.
The Republican slate here is dominated by election deniers in a state where the conspiracy has really taken root.
“One of the most preposterous allegations that still has people believe in it is that we took ballots from the 2020 election, we fed them to chickens, and then we incinerated the chickens,” Richer tells me.
With key positions – including the job of administering Arizona’s vote in the 2024 presidential election – being contested by candidates who claim Donald Trump won in 2020, Richer says he’s deeply worried about the future health of US democracy.
While he believes many of the candidates don’t actually believe the last election was stolen and are instead supporting the theory purely for “pecuniary of political gain” he sees little comfort in that.