Andy Gould and Stephen Richer on Arizona's Primary Election
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It's the new year and time for the new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from godaddy.com today. Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts, Sam Stone and Chuck Warren.

Another fantastic show for you today. Got to thank Kylie Kipper, our industrious producer. She gets the best guests for this program. Thank you, Kylie. First up with us today, Judge Andrew Gould. He's running for Attorney General for the state of Arizona. Obviously has a very different resume. That's a big field running for Attorney General right now. He has a fantastic resume. I'm going to tell you about that here in just a moment, but I want to start by playing an ad, Judge, that you put out.

because there's a lot of talk about the border and immigration right now. And you know more about this probably than anyone else in this field and what can and can't be done. So I want to go ahead and play the audio from that. The man, Andy Gould. The plan, a no trespassing zone.

Tough prosecutor and conservative Judge Andy Gould is running for Attorney General. The Gould plan to post no trespassing signs on state and private land will empower law enforcement to arrest cartel members and illegals when they trespass. Andy Gould's no trespassing zone will work, and that's why I support Andy. He's tough as nails. Conservative Andy Gould for Attorney General. Tough as nails.

So one of the reasons, Judge, that I like that quite a bit was you have a great background for this job. You were an Arizona Supreme Court member. You have served on the Arizona Court of Appeals. You know the law. And so there's a lot of talk about out there among candidates about what can be done and what can't be done. You've really crafted this on what is possible within the existing legal framework that we have.

That's right. And thank you for having me on today.

I spent many years on the border. I lived there for 22 years. Uh, I was a prosecutor down there. I was a judge down there. Uh, and one of the things I saw for years was states do a lot of border security that people don't realize. Uh, when I was in the drug division down there, there were three of us and with a handful of sheriffs, we did a lot of border security. The other thing I saw was that the federal government, Republican and Democrat to be candid with you, uh,

were very inconsistent down on the border. And so I started to think, and over the years I've thought this through, what can a state do? What's the state's authority to enforce border security? Now, immigration, that's a federal issue. The federal government has authority under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution,

to enforce immigration laws and enact immigration laws. But border security is a different issue. And so as I looked at it more and more, my experience living in a border community, seeing what happens with the cartels, directed me towards state law.

And then as I advanced up onto the state court of appeals and then the Supreme Court, I studied it and I became very familiar with what the authority of an attorney general is and what can be done in these border areas. And so that's where I came up

with the No Trespassing Zone plan. And what I've been concerned about is, obviously, there's a lot of ideas running around out there that we can't do. People talk about the state building a wall on federal land. States can't build a wall on federal land. We don't have that authority. I've heard people talking about states deporting and sending the National Guard down to deport illegal aliens.

Again, states don't have the authority to deport. That actually ties to something Governor Abbott ran into this week where they say they're deporting people, but what they're doing is turning them over to Border Patrol and ICE on our side of the border who are just then re-releasing them. That's right. And I mean, there's limitations within the law. And so we have to understand what we can and can't do.

People are angry in this country about the border and coming from a border community, I can tell you they're even angrier down there. So how do we direct that in a way and with a plan that can work?

And so we have this great Tenth Amendment in our Constitution that reserves an awful lot of power to the states. The biggest power the states have is their police power, which is the power to pass criminal laws. And so the No Trespassing Zone Plan is premised on the authority of state law enforcement, primarily sheriffs, to make arrests and enforce laws that protect citizens and their property.

power of state prosecutors to prosecute those laws and the laws themselves they're not preempted by the federal government states can act to protect their citizens from threats and intimidation and act to protect their property as well so that's the basic premise of it and the way it works is is very simple and this is happening on the border already on a smaller scale

There are pinch points where the cartel members come through and where these caravans come across. You don't have to patrol all 371 miles of the border. Now, some of those pinch points may be where they come through the reservation. It could be 50 miles inland or they come through the bombing range down in Yuma. But there's pinch points. They know where they are.

We stage in those areas with cameras and drones and patrols. And as soon as they step on state and private land, that's where our authority kicks in. We can arrest for trespass. But it's not prosecuting trespass cases. I think people misunderstand that. It's prosecuting the crimes that they commit when they trespass. And let me be very specific.

When 15 military-age men come across and step on some farmer's property with backpacks full of fentanyl, they are now committing a drug trafficking crime. They can go to prison. That's a Class 2 felony. The weapons, the guns, the drugs. So you have the authority when you arrest a search incident to arrest. It's called Shemel v. California. It's the Supreme Court case.

We would now have a mechanism to stop these cartel members, arrest them, seize the guns, the drugs and prosecute them. So, Judge, you being from a border city serving in the Supreme Court, have you been surprised by how many people you meet are so concerned about the immigration? It shows today in a data orbital poll that 50 percent of Republican voters say that's their number one issue.

Are you running across that and are you surprised by that? I'm not surprised by it. What we see is the impact of illegal immigration all across this state and frankly throughout the country. So here are the kinds of things that make people very angry. I had a friend in Yuma whose wife was pregnant. He took her down to YRMC, that's the hospital in Yuma,

He could not get a bed for her to deliver her baby because it was filled with people who had come across illegally that were having babies in the hospital.

When you look at some of the situations like up here in Scottsdale, and this has been happening on the border for years, putting up hundreds, thousands of people in the country illegally in hotels right in the middle of their neighborhoods. I can tell you communities like Yuma, we bear a tremendous burden and we don't get reimbursed for it in terms of our jails, our schools. So the impact is tremendous.

is making people angry. And then when they see the violence and the lawlessness, I mean, look at what happened in Texas just a few days ago. 50 people in the back of a semi truck literally cook to death in there.

And so it's the anger over who controls our border, who decides who immigrates into this country. And the reality is the cartels do. And that's that's making people furious. And then when you see the Biden administration refuse to enforce the border, refuse to enforce remain in Mexico, wanting to rescind Title 42 so that.

We have no screening of whatever kinds of diseases. They want to mask U.S. airline passengers. They want to put restrictions on people coming back to this country legally, but they don't want to do anything with the people coming here illegally. At bottom, it is selective enforcement of the law. You follow the law, but the federal government, some of these district attorneys, county attorneys don't.

They don't make the people follow the law that they like. Well, and Chuck, Chuck, go ahead. I think you have a question. No, I was. Go ahead, Sam. I was going to move on to another topic. Well, so real quick, I just want to add I talked to a parent and this is not very politically correct to say, I suppose. And, you know, they didn't want their name used, but their kid is in a class with a large number of Mexican children, South American children who have come here in the last year.

They are a 10th grader at one of the local high schools. These kids have been put in with them. They have, on average, a couple of years of education, not 10 years, not 12 years to get to that point. They've maybe been in class for a couple of years. They need a huge amount of attention. They're very disruptive because they don't follow what's going on. It's a difficult environment for them. Her take is that this is ruining her son's education.

And I don't think she's wrong. I mean, I think that's cruel to say in some sense, but I don't think she's wrong that we need to address this issue on a lot of fronts. Well, look...

I don't know who thinks up these policies of immigration and taking students and putting them in our public school system. We welcome immigrants to this country. We are a nation of immigrants. We need immigration. This is a country that loves people from all around the world. We've fought and died for people all around the world. But at some point, what kind of burden are you putting on a local school? I

In theory, these things may sound good in Washington, D.C., but in practice, in the classroom, at a local level, they're disastrous. So, again, these are the things that people are angry about is you're putting these mandates on us, on teachers, local schools. We don't have the money for it. We don't have the capacity for it.

Well, and quite frankly, a 15-year-old from a low-income environment in South America is a very different kid than a 15-year-old who's grown up in middle-class America. I mean, they've had a much harder existence. They're operating on a different type of basis. I would say that some of these people in Washington, D.C. aren't sending their kids to public school. No. No, they're not. Chuck, go ahead.

Well, when we get back from our break, which is in two minutes, I want to talk about President Biden's executive order today. But would you tell a little bit, people, why you decided to step down from the Arizona Supreme Court?

And run for attorney general. And, you know, when people run for office, say it's governor or legislator, they generally could do things that make people happy. It seems like as attorney general, all you're doing is bringing the hammer down on something, right? You're enforcing the law. So why did you decide to step down from very prestigious role, a very important one, to run for AG and deal with all of us crazy voters? You know, it was an achievement of a lifetime to get on the state Supreme Court. And I loved that job.

But if you're doing your job as a judge, you're calling balls and strikes. You can't be proactive. You can't initiate investigations. It's a very passive role if you do it right. And what I saw happening in the country, there were some things that were so personal to me. The border is very personal to me because I live there.

And I felt at one point, it's time for the reluctant candidates to step forward. They have to give up the safe spaces they have, be it business, law. They have to get into the fight. And I think AGs are the tip of the spear in protecting people and their property and protecting against federal overreach.

Absolutely. No question. Judge, how do people follow you and your campaign real quick? We're going to have you on the next segment, but I want to give that information. My website is Gould4AG.com. It's all spelled out. Gould4AG.com. Fantastic. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back with more from Judge Andrew Gould momentarily.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I think we're having a momentary problem with Chuck's audio. I see him talking, but I'm not hearing him. So now now now we got you, Chuck. He was going to introduce Judge Andrew Gould, who is still with us on the program. And thank you for joining us today, Judge. My pleasure. Running for attorney general for the state of Arizona. Chuck, you had a question when we were heading to break about Biden's executive order.

Yes, Judge. So President Biden today signed an executive order aiming to protect access to reproductive health services or abortion. You made a comment in the last segment about a judge's role as a call balls and strikes is which what the Supreme Court did. Now, this executive order will make medication for abortion, emergency contraception, protect patient privacy, launch public education efforts and bolster the security for legal options available to seek abortions.

What does that mean for Arizona? And if you're the attorney general, what will you do with this executive order? If I were attorney general, I'd be in federal court today.

This is similar to what the Biden administration did with the vaccine mandates. So if you back up here, if we look at the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court said there is no federal right in the United States Constitution to an abortion. It's just the Constitution is simply silent on it. So we have to turn it back to the states. So what does our president do? He issues an executive order.

to control health care decisions and abortion decisions nationwide. He has no authority under Article 2 of the Constitution to issue that order.

Congress has not delegated that authority to him from Article 1, and Congress can't delegate that authority to him because the United States Supreme Court says there is no federal right. So the only authority to issue any regulations on abortions are state legislatures. So he's acted outside of his authority. He has no authority to act.

And what needs to be done is either a quo warranto action or a mandamus action. Those are fancy legal terms for saying, "President, you don't have the constitutional authority to do this. There needs to be an injunction, and this executive order needs to be struck down." It is an example of the worst federal overreach I've seen in quite some time. And I think the president and his lawyers had to have known full well they didn't have authority to issue this.

Do you think our current AG made the right decision saying our

pre-state abortion laws over rules of 15 week abortion law that was passed I think that's a tricky issue Chuck I have to tell you there's a lot of legal concepts that are a play here I know that the new law that was passed in March SB 1164 is clearly constitutional because it's identical for all extents and purposes to the law the Supreme Court upheld in Dobbs the

there's an injunction still barring that older law. I think it's now codified as ARS 133603. And I'm not saying that law doesn't have effect, but there are some conflicts between that law and the current law. So what I would say is it's a legal issue and maybe a legislative issue to kind of work it out. There's a lot of things we're going to have to work out with abortion laws post-Dobbs. Yeah, absolutely. And, and,

You know, I think it's interesting. I think that'll go through the courts before the legislature takes action. So probably to your old job on the Arizona Supreme Court. But then the legislature will be back in session. I think they will take some action there. So that's going to be evolving for a long time. It is. And there's a lot of things that have to be worked out. But at bottom...

I think it was a fantastic decision by the Supreme Court, long overdue, and it certainly strikes a blow for the rights of the unborn. Judge, I want to talk about something that I think is near and dear to Chuck and Mai's heart. It's something we've talked about on this program and the next attorney general of this state and every other state is going to have a lot of say over what happens. It's censorship, what's going on in this country right now.

with voices being censored on a political basis that has no relation to the law that I grew up with. What is your take on this? How do we fight back? Well, as a principle, it's as simple as this. The First Amendment protects speech we don't like. And so this idea of hate speech, there's never been a U.S. Supreme Court decision that has ever talked about hate speech.

We have to be able to protect speech that upsets us, that bothers us. I wrote a decision, the brush and nib decision, as a Supreme Court justice in this state. And it is unique in the country in terms of it protects speech, religious speech.

You can't compel people to say things they don't want to say. And so if you can control what people say, frankly, you can control what people think. A lot of people out there might not know, but I do. And I didn't realize you'd actually written that decision. That was my decision. Tell people real quick what that case was about broadly, because that was a City of Phoenix case.

case that kind of got brought to you by our esteemed legal department. There was there is a city of Phoenix ordinance. It's a public accommodation ordinance and it requires businesses, public businesses not to discriminate based on a number of things, including gender identity and sexual orientation.

There were two Christian wedding invitation makers, and they would serve anybody. They didn't discriminate based on status. But what they objected to is they did custom-made wedding invitations where they put their own poetry, artwork, their speech, their pure speech into these custom wedding invitations.

And their sincerely held belief as Christians is that marriage was between a man and a woman, and they did not want to be compelled to create custom wedding invitations for same-sex weddings. Well, under the Scottsdale Ordinance, they not only faced fines, but they also faced the possibility of going to jail for not following that ordinance. I wrote the decision, and I will tell you there is not a decision like it in the country.

That's compelled speech. I struck down that ordinance as unconstitutional as applied to those two women. You can't force somebody to celebrate same-sex marriage

If they're sincerely held religious belief is that marriage is between man and a woman. The First Amendment protects that. I have always said from the time I saw that case and some of the other similar cases around like the bakers and that sort of thing is it's one thing to say I'm going to discriminate against people walking in and buying something off the shelf in my shop. That would clearly be illegal without question. But when you're asking someone to participate in

and to use their artistic and verbal talents. It's something called pure speech. We protect pure speech. Artwork, poetry, books, that's pure speech. You can't compel pure speech.

Absolutely. And I will tell you as an attorney general, just briefly, there's a lot of things the AG can do from the civil rights laws to the antitrust laws to the consumer protection laws to protect free speech. And I have a plan for that. I know we don't have time to go into it, but I think the AG can be very active against these platforms that discriminate against viewpoints. Love it. Real quick, we have about a minute left before we have to go to break, but tell us why you're the best choice for attorney general for the state. This

This isn't a job for a beginner. There's a lot of tough decisions that are going to have to be made.

Arizona is really ground zero in terms of the legal challenges throughout this country. Everybody is watching. We have monumental challenges to deal with the border, free speech, election integrity. You need someone with experience. I have the experience to do it. I can go in there day one and I have the plans to do it. And I'm dedicated to that office. I'm not running for another office after this one. Trust me. Well, no, but I mean, I think everybody running for office, myself included, is bat crap crazy. I

I'm not sure I'm allowed to say that on a Christian station, but I think it's true. So we're going to throw it out there. Again, thank you for joining us here today. Andrew Gould running for attorney general. You can catch up with him at Gould4FORAG.com. Fantastic to have you on the program. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much, Sam. Thank you, Chuck. Thank you, sir.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds.

Our next guest will join us in the upcoming segment, but in this one, the short segment of the program, we've got some breaking news on Breaking Battlegrounds. Chuck. Data Orbital today released their Republican primary poll. It was done over the 5th and 6th of July. Margin of error, 44 percent. Landline cell phones.

Some interesting numbers there. First of all, the number one issue is immigration. We discussed that a little bit the past episode. I mean, the past segment, 50 percent. The next biggest issue is inflation economy at 33 percent. Everything else is in the single digits. So I don't have this in low single digits. So everything else is in low single digits, including abortion.

Yeah, abortion is 2.9%. Wow. Okay. So look, folks, candidates out there talking about anything right now, right, Chuck, other than immigration and the economy, inflation, they're making a mistake.

Well, even election concerns and voting, it's 6%. Right. I mean, it's just I mean, it's nice if you get asked in a Q&A what your position is, but that's not what people want you leading with. So that's a fascinating number. But that's been very consistent, Sam, with this polling that you and I have seen the last six months. Yeah. I mean, obviously, I think people are concerned about what's happening in this country right now at the border with general lawlessness and with their pocketbooks. I mean, it's hitting people every day and that's driving the news.

Okay, give us the top lines from some of the big races. What are we seeing? So with a Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, you have Blake Masters leading that at 28.9%.

Next is Jim Lehman at 16 percent. And then our current age at 14.8 percent. General McGuire is at 4.8 percent. So that is a race that I think is really coming to fruition for Blake. I mean, never say never, but it's it's I mean, he's now got a double digit lead. And for for Donald Trump, too, because he was running third when he was when Blake Masters was endorsed by Donald Trump. He's jumped to the front.

You and I were talking about this on the phone yesterday, but I haven't talked to anybody in a while now who doesn't think Blake Masters is going to take that home.

No, I mean, you know, he started at two percent. And you and I discussed this. Donald Trump's endorsement, if used correctly, if used correctly, is worth 30 to 35 percent in a crowded primary. Yeah. And that's just that's just the reality. Blake will probably end up about 40 percent or so is my guess. Yeah, I would say so, too. And look, I have said from the start, I don't want to get myself in trouble with the other candidates, but I've said from the start, I think he's the best candidate to take on.

Mark Kelly, because Mark Kelly kind of is a bit of a gray, uninspiring type of person. Blake Masters is the opposite. Very colorful, very entertaining, very articulate. Let's talk about governor's race. Carrie Lake is at 39 percent. Karen Taylor Robson's at 35 percent.

Karen has a double digit lead with those 65 plus. Carrie has a double digit lead with those 55 and below. And who can turn out what? That's what it's going to be at the end of that day. Yeah. Disclosure, obviously, again, I think we talked about this, but I am working as policy director for Carrie Lake. So I have a stake in this one. Karen Taylor Robeson has spent more money than anyone has ever spent through November in the history of Arizona politics.

What would it compare, though, Sam, if you did that versus the earned media that Kerry's generated? Well, I think the breakdown you're showing between the under 55s and over 55s is exactly the point of

of that because Carrie has earned nothing but negative media with the legacy media outlets who hate her. Yeah. Whereas she's gotten a lot of very positive media with the new online media, new right-leaning media, that sort of thing. And the younger folks are seeing that, the older folks are not. Let's quickly go to Two Racists, which...

Folks, don't go to Vegas. Don't bet on anything because you don't know. So for AG, as we discussed, Rodney Glassman, 9.9 percent. The judge, Andy Gould, at 9.5 percent. Lacey Cooper, 3.4. Tiffany Shedd, 4.1. Don Grove, 8.4. And Honest Abe, 13.2 percent. Who has the Trump endorsement? But that is that's a 47 percent undecided.

And I would guess probably over half of that 47 percent are truly undecided. I think they flip a coin going in. There's one. And I have to be honest, you know, be honest here that Honest Abe is a friend. I consider him a very good friend. I think Abe Hamadei is fantastic. Rodney Glassman, likewise, I think is fantastic. I got to say, and those guys are going to get a little mad at me. I think they'd have a very tough time beating Judge Gould if everyone had equal media in this thing.

I mean, if people knew everything about these candidates. Well, that's the last one. The race that everybody says they're really worried about, concerned about, but no one seems to care. It's Secretary of State. Shauna Bullock, 9.6 percent. Boleyn, 10 percent. Mark Finchman, 17.8. He's a Trump endorsed candidate. Michelle Ugenti, 7.8.

I have no idea who wins that at all. It's 51 percent undecided. I have no clue. Chuck, that one is going to be won by whoever wins the eeny, meeny, miny, moe contest on Election Day. Well, it's an amazing contest to be in, but that's what it's going to be. So, Sam, who do we have on our next segment coming up? Coming up, we have a guy who's taken as much flack as any Republican in the country in the last two years, Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder with us when we come back.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Folks, be sure to tune in after this. You can download the podcast, which always has an extra segment on it. And we encourage you to do that wherever podcasts are found. Jamie has made sure it's available in any format you listen to. You can watch it on YouTube. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook. All that kind of ridiculous fun stuff is available.

Yeah, I'm a little burned out on social media today. I got to admit. But in the studio with us right now, someone we're very excited to talk to, a Republican who we've had on here before, who's probably taken more flack than any Republican from other Republicans in the entire country for the last two years.

about an election he didn't actually have any involvement with other than to be elected. Yes. In that election. But write it down, ladies and gentlemen. Sam Stone is tired of social media. So if you see him tweeting later today. Oh, no, I will be tweeting later today. Yeah, no, I am sick to death of it.

Stephen, I feel like you're a far side cartoon. They have the two deer and the one deer has a target on his chest. Bummer of a birthmark, Hal. You know, so let's talk about this for a minute. So Data Orbital came out in the poll. We were talking a little bit about it before you came on. 50% of Republicans say immigration is the number one issue. 33% say inflation, the economy.

Only 6% say election concerns, but that 6% is very loud, aren't they? I hear from them every day, all of that 6%. No, it's good. I mean, it's quieted down a bit. And look, I think people are excited about the 2022 midterm elections. And I think when push comes to shove, people want to vote and they want to know that their vote counts. And so that's the mentality we're in right now. We're going to keep talking to everyone because, you know,

what's the alternative quit yeah that's your job yeah that's your job so so tell us all right so early voting started ballots have been mailed tell people the process early voting started so in arizona it's pretty darn easy to vote and we love that and we want to continue to make it easy but you have a buffet of options for voting so you can vote early by mail you can vote early in person you can vote early by dropping off your ballot or of course you can vote in person on election day and so

We're pleased to offer all of those options, and I'd love to tell you more about each one if you'd like. Please. That's what you're on for. One thing I want to touch on because I think this is important from what I'm hearing from a lot of people. There's a lot of folks who have been on the early ballot list here for a long time who will get those early ballots in the mail. And a lot of them are saying, well, I want to go vote at the polls.

It's important for them to bring that ballot to the poll, right? They don't have to. So the neat thing about our system is it's real-time connected to the voter registration database, meaning that as soon as you get that early ballot, if you mailed it back, we would scan it in. It would log a vote under your profile. So if you tried to show up to the polls, we'd say, hey, we already have a vote cast for you. You have to vote a provisional ballot.

Conversely, if you don't do anything with that ballot and then you go to a voting location, we would check you in. It would register you as a vote for casting that ballot. And then if you went back and you tried to cast that mail ballot, then we wouldn't be able to process that one and move it forward. So whichever one you cast first, if you're on the active early voting list and you get a mail ballot, you're right. Sam's right. You can go still vote in person on election day or early.

Gotcha. Arizona does make it unbelievably easy to vote. I mean, this is one of the things that I get a little crazy about because you have a lot of folks on both sides of the aisle who misunderstand our system politically.

quite frankly. Absolutely. The voter disenfranchisement, look, we'll work hard to make sure that anyone who wants to vote and is lawfully registered to vote can vote. But we have 27 days of early voting. So Chuck asked, when did ballots go out? Well, they went out two days ago and voting locations 10 have already opened.

and we'll be opening more as the days come and we'll have 211 voting locations in the valley and you can go to locations.maricopa.vote you can see wait times you can see which is near your work you can see which is near your home and you can vote at any of them so really

I think Arizona makes it very easy, especially vis-a-vis eastern states that are ironically, despite some of the rhetoric, places where it's harder to vote. Yeah, I love it when New Yorkers want to lecture us on making it easier to vote. Yeah, and they're still looking at, you know, the Delawareans. Lots of those states, you have to have an excuse to vote by mail. Some states only have a few days of early voting. Yeah, right.

It's a good system here. We've had all sorts of types of voting since 1991. I think it's working. I think people like the options. We're here to facilitate those options. Let me ask you a question. So I had an employee who has moved since 2020, and she is on PEDL. And obviously that...

ballot went to her address. How would somebody if that's happened? I'm sure that's happened to a lot of people if they moved. How do they go and get a ballot rerouted to their current address? What do they need to do for that?

The best way to do that is to go to BeBallotReady.Vote if you're a Maricopa County resident. BeBallotReady.Vote and you can log in and it has a beautiful personal dashboard for your voter profile. You can see all the contests that you voted in and you can make any changes that you want. You can change your address, you can change your party affiliation and as soon as you do that we'll send you a new voter ID card

And then we'll have the new updated information. Now, if you're doing that right now, ballots have already been printed and they're already in the mail. But so but you should do that for future elections. And so really, I encourage. Yes, I'm putting a little bit of a burden on individual voters. But be on top of your voter profile. Be on top of your information. And if you've moved. Hold it. You're asking for personal responsibility from people. I'm like, you know, like pick up the phone or go to the Internet and do something. Jeez. Yeah. Yeah.

Who asks for that anymore? My goodness. Well, I'm on the Patriots. So, you know, we got to talk about personal responsibility here a little bit. Beyond that, what did we get away from that in this country? Like I grew up with a country that that was the that was the the the motto of Americans was personal responsibility. We take responsibility for ourselves. And if you look at the arc of voting.

It wasn't too long ago that we were all showing up on election day, waiting in lines, and now we don't have to do that. And that's great, as long as we can do it securely.

But let's keep that context in mind when we talk about what's the next step in voting or any additional security measures aren't necessarily disenfranchisement when viewed in that historical lens. And Chuck knows this. So I'm about to give you my proposal for voting. OK, because this is something Chuck and I have talked about is that there are so few things that connect us in this country anymore.

You know, if you remember Friday mornings at the water cooler in the 80s and 90s, everyone was talking about the same shows because we only had the same four channels to watch. We had lots of stuff that connects us. There really is a lot less of that today than ever before. I think voting can be one of those things. So I'm a believer in getting rid of the early ballots and going to like a three day event for voting and making one of those a man that Tuesday, a mandatory holiday.

even to the point of requiring businesses to give folks a day off in those. Well, the problem with that, Sam, is we actually pulled that. Remember, six months ago. And that was a big thumbs down for people in Arizona. I mean, I know they're down. We are. We are where we are on this now. The polling is there and leave it to Chuck to always have a poll on something. Chuck does have a poll on everything. And Sam, if you give a mouse a cookie.

Yeah, no, I know. And then he wants the glass of – The mouse isn't going to give – yes. Yeah, he's going to want the glass of milk. He's certainly not going to give back the cookie. Well, these days they want the cow too. That's – you know, this is where my problem is. But no, I really believe that as a civic event we ought to be celebrating Election Day as a national holiday. Well, the only unifying factor we have right now I think is the movie Maverick. That is –

That is actually the only thing. Thank you, Tom Cruise. Yes, every American can agree on. But I think every American does agree that we want safe and secure elections. And I do believe that we have that here in Maricopa County. We do have a multitude of ways. Not everyone will vote the same way, but everyone's ballot should count differently.

ultimately in the end. So hopefully that can be a rallying cry, whether you vote in person or you vote early. We do, like I said, we make sure that every voter profile only has one vote. We do confirm your identity. If you're voting in person, you have to bring identification. If you're voting early, again, you have to use that envelope, that green return envelope that has a barcode linking to you as a voter, and you have to sign it because we match that signature with the signatures on your profile.

I do have to push back on you on one point. OK. I signed I signed up for the permanent early voting list a couple in 2020 because I didn't want to wear a mask to the polling place. OK. Really. That was my reason. I like going to the polling place. But I signed up for that reason. I signed up online on my computer, my desktop and signed that signature with a mouse. It looks nothing like anything I have ever signed. No. In any format by hand.

And my votes count. Right. And I'm sending them in with my normal signature on it. So the signature verification, I have to say, of all the criticisms, that's one where I feel like there is a deficit. So the Superior Court did review some of the signatures in the post 2020 context and they found it to be accurate.

Look, it's a subjective measure to a certain extent. The ballot does go to your home address. It's linked to your voter profile. And so, yes, we are looking for general curves that look along the same lines. But I'm not going to dispute the subjectivity that there is some subjective nature to it. I'm definitely going to be stopping Sam's ballot this cycle.

No, you should. I mean, on a signature basis, you absolutely should. Flag it. Flag it. And, you know, Maricopa County in the November 2020 election did flag 24,000 signatures that they originally marked as invalid. And then they would follow up with those voters and see if they could rehabilitate it. But to Sam's point.

the state legislature. And in fact, it will be on the ballot in November because the state legislature referred a measure to the ballot whereby voters would be required to not only sign, but to put their date of birth and also some non-subjective measure, such as your last four of your social security or the 10 digits of your driver's license. You know, that's a public policy debate that's going on. And I guess it's going to be decided by the voters, which I

You know, well, in their infinite wisdom, we'll hopefully choose wisely. I have to ask about something because I've kind of said I think you look at 2016, 60 percent of Democrats thought the election was stolen. Twenty twenty and 70 percent of Republicans. I don't think there's much difference, really. I think people are when they're their candidate are losing or assuming there's some sort of nefarious act happening.

I keep arguing for going one of two directions. Let's either go really old school where we have to hand count everything and slow everything down or blockchain.

I can't explain blockchain to anybody as the problem, but is that a potential solution for ballot security going forward? I think blockchain is likely the distant future because in blockchain, as I understand it, though please don't make this a podcast about blockchain, you're the only ... Nobody would listen to a podcast about blockchain. I don't know. They have sort of a cult following. Yeah, they do, but none of them ...

We have a different audience. All right. Nobody cares about blockchain anymore.

The problem with any sort of format right now where you could pull up a receipt is that the back end would have access to it. And in the United States, that's a major no-no because you don't want the recorder's office to be able to pull up and see how Sam Stone voted.

And and we've done that. I'm a party line Republican. I'm pretty sure there's no surprise. Well, you know, I don't know. Maybe, you know, another member of Sam Stone's household that then Sam would pressure or something like that. Sam Sam's godson will. But the other thing I will say is that we have 100 percent paper ballots here in Arizona. And the reason that that's.

actually a nice system is because when you talk about things like internet connectivity, which there was none of, when you talk of things about like hacking or file deletion,

None of it ultimately matters because we will always have paper ballots to go back to and that's an audible trail. So even if we have an electric magnetic pulse that goes off in Phoenix and takes down everything with any sort of circuitry, we would still have the paper ballot. Steven, I got to tell you from my time at the city of Phoenix and our emergency planning department, if we have an EMP that takes down the grid here in Phoenix...

Our ballots are not going to be of concern to anybody once we start dying on day three en masse. Yeah, I think air conditioning will be number one, right? Water. Yeah, water. We have 24 hours of water. Don't you worry. Your ballots will be secure in our vault, though. Okay, so your ballots will be secure while you are all dying of thirst. There you have it.

I think that should almost be the final word for this thing. Well, we just redesigned our website, so maybe I can put in a final plug for that. Elections.Maricopa.gov. We want to make it easy for you to get information. We want to make it easy to understand. And my last plug would be that if you want to know more about the process, you have two options. You can either ask me, and I'd love to answer your question. Just reach out. Or you can be part of the process. We're still hiring volunteers.

temporary poll workers, temporary election facility workers to be part of this. And we have 3,000 temp workers that we want to hire. So come be part of the team. Awesome. Stephen Richard, thank you for joining us today. Now, what was the website real quick again that people can go to to check on their ballot? BeBallotReady.Vote. There it is, folks. .Vote, our sponsor, had to bring that extra plug in. Breaking Battlegrounds back on the air next week. Stay tuned for the podcast-only segment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds podcast only segment still in the studio with us, Stephen Richer. He probably wants to kill me because I'm involved with his chief antagonist right now, but he's being polite about it and he's here in the studio. And before we get back into that,

Folks, it's been a while. It has been a while. It has been a long time. Do we even still have the music queued up anywhere? Oh, Jeremy says we do. It is. The sunshine moment with Kylie Kephart. It's been quite some time, but I'm happy to be back. I'm always in studio, but you know.

Sometimes the sunshine. The sunshine has been gone for a long time from this program. I know, I know. But today I have a cool nonprofit. It's called Heroes Never Alone. And it's a nonprofit that renovates homes for war veterans to fit their changing needs. So what they'll do is they'll go in and either renovate their home or the founders, Sheila and Andrew Gronick, they actually bought some land where they're building homes to have people move into.

The first property they bought is two acres and the other one is five acres. And so what they're doing is building homes on there to help Vietnam War veterans. But they not only are building homes and renovating homes, they are also providing them with resources such as doctors, nurses, psychologists, therapists. And something cool that I found about Sheila and Andrew is they bought this with their own savings and they just felt that this was something they had to do. These are just everyday people. Everyday people that just wanted to help out.

um they'll also they have volunteers that will help cook meals grocery shop so how can people support this mission because i mean these folks are going they're going a big road alone there they really are so heroesneveralone.org you can see photos of their process they're almost done with the first ranch style house in pennsylvania and so you can see their process there but you can also donate read more about what they're doing i know they can

Always use some help with that. But they have skin in the game. So you know that their money is exactly going to building these homes and helping. Well, now I can start calling her the irrepressible Kylie Kipper again. It's been a little while since I've gotten that name. Well, you know, I mean, we've repressed you. We haven't even had a sunshine moment like a month and a half. It's been forever. We could all use a little sunshine.

Always. Every show. Every show. All right. Let's get back to Steven here. What was the last sunshine moment when the Suns were still in the playoffs and Chuck was still going to those games? No, I'm a Celtics fan. We don't care about that. Basically. All right.

Let's get back to voting. Yeah. Let's get back to voting. Stephen, what else would you want people to know about their ballots and what they need to do? What's a common question you get asked that you can answer? Yeah. Lots of things that you shouldn't do. You

on your ballot. You should use a blue or black marking device for if you're voting at home. You need to mail it back by the 26th of July if you're going to use the United States Post Office because we have to receive that 7 p.m. on Election Day. If you tear it, you can write in and get another ballot. If you smudge it, if you spell God knows what on it because a lot of you do spill stuff on your ballot. Ha ha ha!

You can get another ballot as long as you request that before the 22nd, or you could go to one of these voting locations and you can just get one there. How often are people sitting there trying to decide if that is an intentional mark or a coffee? Everything is coffee. If we categorize it as anything else, then that just leads to questions that we don't want answers to. We are not asking those questions here. No, there's some love notes that are written. There's some interesting...

I guess, treatises that are written in the margin. But I would say, you know, let's just leave it to voting, fill the ovals in, put it in the green envelope, seal the green envelope, sign the green envelope, send it back or go in person. Track your ballot as well. You can go to that website or you can sign up for text message alerts. And so we want you to feel good about this process. And that helps is that you can go online and you can say, hey, my ballot was received. It was tabulated. You know,

Again, try to make people feel good about the process. Excellent. To be honest, and look, I work with Carrie Lake. She knows I have certain disagreements with her over the most recent election. I do think it was stolen, not in the way she does. I think if you look at, we know Democrats always ballot harvest. That's been something the Democratic Party has done for years. They're still doing it.

We know that the Russia collusion story was pushed for three years in the media when they knew it was false. The Hunter Biden story was suppressed when they knew it was true. I think you add up all of those things that Zuckerberg money, which you didn't had no part in, but the previous occupant of your office did.

I think you add all those things up. I would agree that it was stolen, but I disagree on some of them, you know, that it's the machines or this or that. So let's talk about where we are today. So ballot harvesting still unlawful in Arizona. This was something that the attorney general litigated very hard all the way up to the United States Supreme Court to

preserve Arizona's anti-ballot harvesting law. So do not take your neighbor's ballot. You can take a ballot in that's for your spouse, for your family members, for your household members, or for anyone for whom you are a caretaker. Private funding. The Arizona State Legislature outlawed private funding in elections, meaning no private grants from any institutions. All of it's publicly funded, meaning it's either coming from the county, from the state legislature, or from a federal grant.

So those are things that I think people, steps that have been taken to sort of shore up those measures. We've certainly talked on this show before about the media has a level of culpability in this era of distrust. And part of that is because a failure to acknowledge when they got stories wrong or when stories were real stories and they said they weren't real stories. And so...

You know, I think that that's a big question. Fortunately, it's not my question. So hopefully you guys will make somebody else speak to that. But, you know...

with the time that I am given in this office, our only goal is to, no matter where your confidence level was entering into this, we want it to be higher. And I really say that I've got a team of people who are psychotically dedicated to elections. So if you send us a question, we want to answer it. If you want a tour, heck, maybe we can do one of your future, future episodes at the elections department. That'd be great. That's a great idea. Absolutely. And, and,

In all fairness, for all the flack you've taken, you respond to everybody. I mean, you really don't, you know, just kind of brush this stuff off. You really do engage on it and try to explain a system that, frankly, a lot of people don't understand. And nobody. Yeah. And that and that is.

I'll say in defense of elections is people didn't really particularly care prior to a few years ago. Yes, there were always confidence dips depending on if you lost or won the election. But there wasn't this big national conversation regarding election administration. So elections departments are playing catch up in the election.

in our ability to communicate what actually happens in the process. And then the other thing is every jurisdiction is a little bit different. So that makes it an inherently confusing process because you might hear one thing about voting in Vermont that could be wildly inappropriate in Arizona. And so, you know,

You know, and we've had we have such a national media landscape. And I know that you guys broadcast in Florida, which might have very different rules. And so it does create a confusing dynamic. But we're here to help voters through that as much as possible. Outstanding. Well, thank you again for joining us. Chuck, do you have more questions or are we wrapping up? I do not. We appreciate you. We appreciate it. All right. We'll vote. Let me know if you have any questions. And when in doubt, how do they find you? How do they?

keep up with you? How can they ask you those questions? You can email me or you can call. My email is recorder at risc.maricopa.gov. Or you can just ask Sam and he can send you my way or Chuck can send you my way. Or you can go to our new website, elections.maricopa.gov. Perfect. Stephen Richer, Maricopa County Recorder. Thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate, as always, having you on the program. And folks...

Get those ballots in. Get them in. Vote. Vote like crazy. Big election. Lots of open seats. Open governor. Open attorney general. Open secretary of state. Open season on Mark Kelly for the U.S. Senate. So, hey, it's all open, folks. Let's go get them. Let's go.

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