Maricopa County, Arizona, Is Again Ground Zero of Election Conspiracy Theories
Maricopa County, Arizona, Is Again Ground Zero of Election Conspiracy Theories
“Maricopa is a very, very dishonest county,” President Donald Trump told reporters last week.
“马里科帕是一个非常、非常不诚实的县，”唐纳德·特朗普总统上周对记者说。
One could be forgiven for thinking that you had time-traveled back to the chaotic weeks and months following the 2020 presidential election, when Arizona’s Maricopa County became the focal point for the election denial movement.
如果有人以为自己穿越回了2020年总统大选后那段混乱的岁月，当时亚利桑那州的马里科帕县成为了选举否定运动的焦点，这并不足为奇。
But Maricopa, and election deniers, are back. With just over two weeks to go before the midterms, extremist election activists are trying to undermine trust in the voting process and are ramping up their efforts to confuse and scare people. Central to this is to fall back on well-known tropes that have been used in the past, including the idea that Maricopa County is somehow corrupt.
但马里科帕县和那些选举否定者又回来了。距离中期选举还有两周多一点的时间，极端选举活动人士正试图破坏人们对投票过程的信任，并加紧努力去迷惑和恐吓民众。其核心策略是重拾过去使用过的老套路，包括宣称马里科帕县在某种程度上存在腐败。
“At this point, people are tuned into Maricopa as a focus of election rumors,” Kate Starbird, cofounder of the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, tells WIRED. “Sharpie pens bleeding through ballots in 2020. Tabulator machines not reading ballots in 2022. Maricopa has become a familiar setting, a place where election issues arise or are perceived to arise, and where those issues get wrapped into ‘rigged election’ conspiracy theories.”
华盛顿大学“知情公众中心”（Center for an Informed Public）联合创始人凯特·斯塔伯德（Kate Starbird）告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志：“目前，人们已经将马里科帕县视为选举谣言的焦点。2020年的记号笔墨水渗漏问题，2022年的计票机无法读取选票问题。马里科帕县已经成为一个熟悉的场景，一个选举问题出现或被认为出现的地方，也是这些问题被包装进‘选举舞弊’阴谋论的地方。”
No evidence of widespread voter fraud in Maricopa County has ever been found, but in March of this year, the administration refocused attention on the county when the FBI seized dozens of hard drives and servers containing data from the Cyber Ninjas audit. The attention was intensified last week, when Trump told reporters that election officials in the county should “be ashamed of themselves” after 3,000 ballots were mailed early in error.
马里科帕县从未发现大规模选民欺诈的证据，但今年3月，当联邦调查局（FBI）查封了数十个包含“网络忍者”（Cyber Ninjas）审计数据的硬盘和服务器时，政府再次将注意力集中在该县。上周，在3000张选票因错误被提前寄出后，特朗普告诉记者，该县的选举官员应该“为自己感到羞耻”，这使得关注度进一步升温。
But the rumors went into overdrive last weekend when We the People USA Alliance, an election-denial group central to the baseless claims about voter fraud in Maricopa County in 2020, posted a video on X with the caption “BUSTED.”
然而，上周末，当“我们人民美国联盟”（We the People USA Alliance）——一个曾散布2020年马里科帕县选民欺诈毫无根据指控的核心选举否定组织——在X平台上发布了一段配文为“抓个正着”（BUSTED）的视频时，谣言进入了疯狂传播阶段。
The video shows two Maricopa County employees working late at night on October 7 inside the ballot tabulation center. The post insinuated that they were tampering with equipment by “inserting flash drives into computers … during an active election.”
视频显示，10月7日深夜，两名马里科帕县员工在计票中心工作。该帖文暗示他们通过“在选举进行期间……将闪存驱动器插入计算机”来篡改设备。
The post also named a Maricopa County employee, who was previously targeted with similarly unfounded claims and threats back in 2021.
该帖文还点名了一名马里科帕县员工，此人曾在2021年就遭到过类似的无端指控和威胁。
The video quickly racked up over 1 million views, boosted by figures like Kari Lake, the former TV star who is now a senior adviser in the Trump administration, who also boosted claims about election fraud in Maricopa County when she lost races in 2022 and 2024 for governor and the US Senate, respectively.
这段视频迅速获得了超过100万次的观看量，并得到了卡里·莱克（Kari Lake）等人的推波助澜。莱克曾是电视明星，现在是特朗普政府的高级顾问，她在2022年竞选州长和2024年竞选美国参议员失败时，也曾大肆宣扬马里科帕县存在选举舞弊的说法。
“More shenanigans at the Maricopa county ballot tabulation center,” Lake wrote on X. “Only through God’s intervention was this even discovered.”
“马里科帕县计票中心又搞鬼了，”莱克在X上写道。“多亏了上帝的干预，这件事才被发现。”
But it wasn’t God who provided the video to the group. Jennifer Liewer, the deputy elections director for communications in Maricopa County tells WIRED that the clip was taken from a nonpublic backup livestream camera that is active but not currently one of the livestream cameras available on the county’s website. A source with knowledge of the matter who was not authorized to speak on the record tells WIRED that members of the We the People group had obtained the IP address for the camera years ago, allegedly allowing them to continue to monitor it. We the People did not respond to a request for comment.
但提供这段视频给该组织的并非上帝。马里科帕县选举通讯副主任詹妮弗·利弗（Jennifer Liewer）告诉《连线》，这段视频截取自一个非公开的备份直播摄像头，该摄像头处于工作状态，但目前并未在县政府网站上公开直播。一位不愿透露姓名的知情人士告诉《连线》，“我们人民”组织的成员多年前就获取了该摄像头的IP地址，据称这使他们能够持续监控该摄像头。“我们人民”组织未回应置评请求。
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors issued a statement last week that debunked the claim, clarifying that the employees were “performing authorized and necessary work to update software and upload election data to a computer terminal that is not connected to the internet or ballot tabulation equipment.”
马里科帕县监事会（Board of Supervisors）上周发表声明驳斥了这一说法，澄清说这些员工当时正在“执行授权且必要的工作，以更新软件并将选举数据上传到一台未连接互联网或计票设备的计算机终端上。”
Unsatisfied with this explanation, Shelby Busch, the founder of We The People USA Alliance and a representative for the Republican National Committee (RNC), then contacted the Maricopa County recorder Justin Heap, who is aligned with Trump. His office then contacted the FBI to investigate the issue, according to Heap’s chief of staff.
对这一解释不满意，“我们人民美国联盟”创始人兼共和党全国委员会（RNC）代表谢尔比·布希（Shelby Busch）随后联系了与特朗普立场一致的马里科帕县记录官贾斯汀·希普（Justin Heap）。据希普的幕僚长称，他的办公室随后联系了联邦调查局对此事进行调查。
The FBI asked an investigator from the Arizona attorney general’s office to investigate, and they quickly concluded there was nothing to investigate, according to a copy of their report seen by 12News. “Election integrity is one of the top priorities of this FBI, and we continue to work around the clock to pursue criminal actors who seek to undermine our system and the rule of law,” the FBI tells WIRED.
据12News看到的一份报告副本显示，联邦调查局要求亚利桑那州总检察长办公室的一名调查员进行调查，他们很快得出结论，此事无需调查。联邦调查局告诉《连线》：“选举公正性是本届联邦调查局的首要任务之一，我们将继续全天候工作，追捕那些试图破坏我们制度和法治的犯罪分子。”
The RNC and Busch did not respond to a request for comment.
共和党全国委员会和布希未回应置评请求。
The FBI’s closed investigation has not quelled the conspiracy theories. On Thursday, Busch appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast repeating claims that something nefarious had happened, and that she had contacted the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to investigate the matter further.
联邦调查局的结案调查并未平息阴谋论。周四，布希出现在史蒂夫·班农（Steve Bannon）的“作战室”（War Room）播客节目中，重申了发生了邪恶事件的说法，并称她已联系国土安全部和司法部对此事进行进一步调查。
“Can somebody get involved here?” Bannon replied.
“有人能介入这里吗？”班农回应道。
The Justice Department, DHS, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
司法部、国土安全部和白宫未回应置评请求。
“Election rumors contain the same, or very similar, narrative tropes that make them easily digestible for audiences and remixable for rumor producers,” says Starbird, whose group has created a bingo card of such tropes. “Maricopa County has become a trope, a suspicious setting, for election rumors. It’s a ready-to-use building block for a new rumor or conspiracy theory.”
“选举谣言包含相同或非常相似的叙事套路，这使得它们容易被受众消化，也容易被谣言制造者重新组合，”斯塔伯德说，她的团队甚至制作了一张此类套路的宾果游戏卡。“马里科帕县已经成为选举谣言的一个套路，一个可疑的背景。它是构建新谣言或阴谋论的现成基石。”