“At some point we are humans, this has to stop,” Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront.”
âThere are good people working here in Maricopa County and I was tired of being vilified,â he said. “This is my team. This is my office. They are my friends.”
His comments come after Trump mistakenly said in a statement on Saturday that “the entire Maricopa County database in Arizona has been DELETED!” Richter responded by calling the claim “unbalanced” on Twitter.
âI’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now,â he wrote. “We can no longer indulge in these senseless lies. As a party. As a state. As a country.”
Consideration of the ballots was temporarily suspended last week when the lease for the Senate and its technology consultants was in effect at the Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum, where openly partisan volunteers and hourly workers were doing the counting.
Despite public promises that this third scrutiny of the ballot would be completed by May 14, Arizona Senate Liaison Officer Ken Bennett told CNN last week that they only got around 500,000 ballots before they were forced to give up their space.
The Arizona Secretary of State has already certified election results showing President Joe Biden narrowly won the state. But the latest review shows how many Republicans continue to cling to Trump’s baseless allegations of widespread electoral fraud in 2020 – lies that continue to rock the GOP.
“It was a very rude awakening to what has become of politics. And if I’m not in it in four years, so be it. I can do other things that will make me happy,” Richer said on Monday.
“What prompted me now? I’m tired of my people – who are good people, who are my friends – being vilified. It just isn’t fair.”