‘I hope you get cancer’: Election worker, a dangerous job in the United States Trump-fueled conspiracies are fueling threats against officials like Bill Gates. One county supervisor in the swing state of Arizona stepped down after being diagnosed with PTSD This season’s most experimental “movie” in the swing state of Arizona is the 24/7 webcast of early vote count in Maricopa County. It’s a production that might remind one of Gene Hackman’s line in Night Moves : “like watching paint dry.
” The film’s cast — dozens of election workers — spend their days sitting in bipartisan pairs, inspecting defective ballots that the high-tech counting machines couldn’t process. Occasionally, a technician steps in to open and clean the machine. Around noon, the workers — prohibited from having cell phones or food and drink in the lounge — take turns going out for lunch or a cigarette.
It’s the most exciting time of the day. In a bid for transparency, Maricopa County officials — serving a population of about 4.5 million in the fastest-growing district in the U.
S. — set up cameras to broadcast the vote count, a kind of ode to boredom. In 2020, the Phoenix-based building became ground zero for Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” — he falsely claimed that the election had been rigged after he lost this crucial state by just over 10,000 votes.
It was the first time that Arizona had elected a Democratic president since Bill Clinton in 1996, turning a state that had .
