CNN —
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates was moved to an undisclosed location on Election Day due to threats to his safety, his spokesperson on Monday confirmed to CNN.
Gates, a Republican, plays a prominent role in administering elections for Arizona’s largest county. During the midterms, he publicly pushed back against Republican suggestions that there were issues with the way the county conducted the election.
Zach Schira, a spokesperson for Gates, told CNN the supervisor is also receiving increased security as he performs his official duties.
Maricopa County spokesperson Jason Berry told CNN Gates was moved to an undisclosed location on Election Day after there was a specific threat made against Gates on social media. He was under the protection of the sheriff’s office and stayed at the undisclosed location for that one night.
Berry said there was an uptick in threats against election workers and officials around the election as well as the primary earlier this year. Maricopa County became the center of the election conspiracy theory universe after then-President Donald Trump lost the state in 2020.
“The chairman has said before that the environment that we’re in, where people are spreading misinformation, certainly has not helped, and we’ve seen that over the last two years, not just this election, 2020 and then 2021 with the audit. So I think that, unfortunately, this has sort of been where we’ve been at for a couple years and it sort of ebbs...
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