Editors’ Note: The following article is published to report the frustration and disappointment with the conduct of the August 2nd primary election in Maricopa County under the leadership of Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer. The Prickly Pear interviewed Mr. Richer in 2020 as a candidate for the Recorder’s office when he ran against and defeated Adrian Fontes, a Democrat partisan with clear violations of his role as a nonpartisan Recorder conducting honest elections. Stephen promised to make the Recorder’s office “boring again” and stated publicly that Fontes was incompetent and had criminally violated the office. The 2022 primary election in Maricopa County speaks very poorly of Mr. Richer’s competence and we question his ability to manage the November general election and, critically, the 2024 election. We are not yet calling for his removal as stated in the following article but are watching closely his performance and behavior going forward.

Separately, we observed voter after voter (too numerous to count) arriving at our polling stations this past Tuesday, August 2nd, depositing their ‘mail-in ballots’ in the ‘mail-in ballot’ box located where we traditionally actually cast our vote in the voting booth with the result available for tabulation by the evening for announced election results. With 80-85% of Arizonans voting by mail-in ballot and ballots arriving in their mailboxes almost 30 days before election day, dropping these green envelopes off at polling stations the actual day of the election prevents a full counting for days to weeks, if ever, with significant opportunity for election fraud. Signature verification and actual recording of mail-in ballots are labor intensive and delay the final vote tallies for every office throughout the state. A future article at The Prickly Pear will examine this major issue of the voting mechanisms in our state with recommendations for voter education and reform of our broken electoral system.

Tonight, The Maricopa County Republican Committee will move to formally censure RINO Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who ran on a platform of rooting out corruption in elections and cracking down on election fraud, but has done the exact opposite.

This resolution calls on Richer to resign or be permanently expelled from office by the voters through a recall.

Maricopa County had another corrupt election on Tuesday. The Gateway Pundit reported on the major fraud concerns and issues in Maricopa and statewide. We also reported that Maricopa County stopped the counting in the middle of the night on election night, just after Trump-Endorsed MAGA Queen Kari Lake took the lead.

Now, they’re still counting the ballots! The whole world is watching and wondering, what the hell is going on?