(JustPatriots.com)- The legal team for Kari Lake questioned Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer in the courtroom where the voting rights case involving the 2022 Election in Maricopa County was heard.
On the witness stand, Stephen Richer’s responses were troubling.
Richer attested to the broken chain of custody. Arizona election law was broken when all ballots were assigned to a third party or location.
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
In Maricopa County, Arizona, Richer ran for office in 2020, promising to “make the Recorder’s Office boring again.” By any measure, he is a failure.
The self-described “hardcore libertarian” was elected as a Republican after writing a damning 228-page review of Maricopa County’s 2018 election administration and a 48-page audit criticizing the Democrat in charge of the county’s elections.
Republicans eager to improve election administration in the populous county where more than 60% of Arizonans live backed him on his promise to be less political than his predecessor Adrian Fontes and restore confidence in elections,
After being elected, Richer abruptly and categorically rejected his earlier rhetoric and assertions, even defending Fontes’ integrity—the man he had claimed was so crucial to overthrowing.
Now that he was in a position of power, he frequently defended the Democrat-run 2020 election in Maricopa County, wrote op-eds for CNN opposing the election audits he conducted to convince others he needed to be in control, wrote extensive polemics denouncing Republican leaders and voters for their concerns about election integrity, and promoted ranked-choice voting, and other initiatives that opponents claim will harm voter confidence in elections.
To support candidates in Arizona who shared his views, he even started a political action committee funded by Democrats, a move that moral election officials vehemently denounced as unethical. He was recently sued for attempting to obliterate the paper trail and staffing polls with Democrats by the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Arizona.
He was charged with breaking the law by using taxpayer money to defeat an Arizona ballot measure that would have strengthened the requirements for voter identification for both unsupervised and in-person voters.
Additionally, he just recently acknowledged that the chain of custody regarding the protection of the votes was broken while testifying in the Lake trial.
We must get better people. Without fair elections, we are nothing.
