The 2022 election ended months ago, at least in most of the country.
In a rural county on the US-Mexico border in Arizona, though, the election and its fallout linger, causing heated divisions and offering a view into how conspiracy theories could upend elections across the country.
While statewide candidates in Arizona who embraced election lies lost their races in November, the election denialism movement hasn’t died off, especially in legislative and local offices, where Republicans continue to push for restrictions to voting and ballot counting that would hinder access and make elections less secure.
Fueled by false claims about whether ballot tabulation machines are properly certified or accurate, supervisors in Republican-controlled Cochise county tried to conduct a full hand count of its election results and attempted not to certify the county’s results.
Their efforts ultimately failed, but they reveal how election denialism has taken hold in parts of the United States and could continue to wreak havoc on American democracy.
The effort to question election results has been led by two of Cochise county’s Republican supervisors, Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, who were both vocal in their efforts to upend the county’s elections.
Courts intervened, stopping the hand count effort and forcing certification, but the supervisors, including Crosby who still refused to participate in certification, remain adamant that the county’s elections are not secure. As...
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