By Merissa Hamilton |
Recorder Stephen Richer is a far cry from Candidate Richer we met just 4 years ago.
When Stephen Richer ran for Recorder in 2020, he promised us “fair and competent elections,” “no rogue policymaking,” and “NO FIGHTS WITH VOTERS.” His commitment was that if we the people elected him to arguably one of the most critical offices in Arizona related to overseeing the 2024 Presidential Election, he would “further transparency and accountability” in the Recorder’s Office.
His legal fights to refuse to comply with public records requests under the guise of “it’s for your safety” are well known. However, when I received a notice in the mail that he was going to inactivate my voter registration, I thought surely, we could expect transparency for our own voter records! After all, he promised to follow the law, and ARS 16-168F specifically affords voters the right to public inspection of their own voter registration records. It even requires the Recorder to conduct this service at the “office of the county recorder.”
Per testimony on January 31, 2024 by the lobbyist representing the Counties, the voter registration record is quite comprehensive. It includes essentially a transcript of every action the Recorder’s Office took on your record and every action you took as a voter. It includes your signature records, voting history, address history, registration history, and even your affidavit envelopes if you vote early.
Knowing this, I thought this inactive voter misunderstanding could simply be cleared up by asking for a public inspection of my voter registration record at his office. My immediate concern was that there was some tampering with my record since USPS had not disrupted my mail, and to my recollection, I’ve received all the same mail as the other voters in my household.
On February 20th, I went to Recorder Richer’s office in the afternoon to ask for an in-person inspection of my full voter record, only to be told I had to schedule an appointment for a public inspection.
Ok. No worries. I am a reasonable person.
The next day, after I emailed for an appointment, I was told they closed down the public from inspecting their voter record until April 3rd – well after the Presidential Preference Election concludes. This means that the previous day I made the request was the last opportunity they offered for electors to view their records and ensure everything was in order.
My friend Sean Campbell said it best in reminding us what Mr. Richer promised, “In June of 2020, Stephen Richer, while running for Maricopa County Recorder, gave a brief speech saying ‘we haven’t had transparency, we haven’t had competency, we haven’t even had lawfulness, we haven’t had fairness in the Recorder’s office and in our election system.'”
Can the 2020 Stephen Richer please remind this 2024 Recorder Richer guy what transparency, competency, lawfulness, and fairness mean?
Unless we can inspect our full record, we don’t know what signatures are actually on record or what the signature on our affidavit envelope that was counted looks like. With most voters voting on the early vote system, transparency in our elections with in-person public inspections of our records is the only security measure under the voter’s control that we have on our ballots.
What’s worse is that the voter roll cleanup Stephen Richer brags about is not even with actual returns of physical mail from USPS. He is removing voters without verifying they even received a physical piece of mail that was returned. Instead, USPS just sends him a digital file with voters to inactivate. He doesn’t even add the file to our voter record according to the Director of Constituent Services for his office. How many other highly active voters like me were erroneously inactivated through this lazy, digitized process?
There’s no excuse for Recorder Richer not to follow the law and allow voters in-person inspections of our full voter records in his office. There’s already a kiosk inside the voter service area. He also has conference rooms that can accommodate voters.
But these are not the only recent incidents where Recorder Richer has deliberately mismanaged his duties, disqualifying him from continuing in this role.
Recorder Richer ditched Phil the Ballot and used taxpayer dollars to promote himself with highly edited photos and videos.
In the 2023 bond elections, Recorder Richer shut down voting locations hours early after going on news broadcasts that day, telling voters all locations would be open until 7 pm. This likely disenfranchised thousands of voters.
Maricopa County voters deserve better. We deserve dignity back in our elections instead of constantly being the national laughingstock. And at the very minimum, we deserve transparency without suppressing voters from seeing our full voter records. These are low bars that Recorder Richer refuses to fulfill. Now, he either needs to step up and fulfill them or move on to a new role.
Merissa Hamilton is the founder and Chairwoman of Strong Communities Action, also known as EZAZ.org, a non-profit organization focused on making civic action and education easy as pie. She’s an elected Member at Large of Congressional District 1 for the Arizona Republican Party. She’s the Executive Director of Save Arizona. She previously ran for Mayor in 2020.
