Democracy and Destiny EP 10 with Stephen Richer

[00:00:00] This is Democracy and Destiny with Ciara Torres-Spelliscy. I have the per curiam opinion and judgment to announce on behalf of the court in Buckley against Valeo. We have a cancer within close to the presidency that’s growing. In case 0 8 2 0 5 Citizens United versus the FEC, Justice Kennedy has the opinion of the court.

The First Amendment's core purpose is to foster a vibrant political system full of robust discussion and debate. There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders. With fear for our democracy, I, along with Justices Kagan and Jackson, dissent.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Welcome to the show. I am Ciara Torres-Spelliscy. I'm a professor at Stetson Law School in Florida, [00:01:00] and I'm a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. I work on the intersection of election law and corporate law. This show was inspired by my third book, Corporatocracy. How to protect democracy from dark money and corrupt politicians, published by NYU Press election day 2024. I realize in today's busy world, reading a 300-page book is not on everyone's to-do list, but even I as a professor have time to listen to radio shows and podcasts when I'm commuting to campus or walking my dog. So here we are. This is “Democracy and Destiny.”

Today's episode is about election administration. I'll be joined in a few minutes with my guest, Stephen Richer from the Ash Center at Harvard, who will talk about his experiences running elections in Arizona. First, let's start with Pay to Play Today. [00:02:00]

The term pay to play comes from the radio payola scandals. From the 1950s and 1960s, record companies would pay radio stations to play their music, hence it was literally pay to play. Today the phrase pay to play is shorthand for all kinds of political corruption. Especially when a government contractor or others with business pending in front of the government bribes a public official to get a private benefit, like a lucrative no bid contract or approval of a corporate merger.

One of the things that I learned while writing my book Corporatocracy is that political corruption is prosecuted frequently, but the media just doesn't report on it as often as other things like celebrity news. That leaves the mis impression with the public that corrupt politicians or shady government contractors are always getting away with crimes. So I swore to myself if I ever had a news [00:03:00] generating platform that I would highlight that political corruption can be met with serious legal consequences. So our example of pay to play today is from the DOJ.

Let's call this one "In the Navy." In 2025, Admiral Robert Burke, U.S. Navy retired 62 of Coconut Creek, Florida, was found guilty of bribery in connection with accepting future employment at a government vendor in exchange for awarding that company a government contract.

Following a five day trial, a federal jury found Burke guilty of conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery, and concealing material facts from the United States. The verdict was announced by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. Quote, “when you abuse your position and betray the public's trust to line your own pockets, it undermines the confidence in the government you represent.” End quote said, U.S. Attorney Pirro. [00:04:00] Our office with our law enforcement partners will root out corruption, be it bribes or illegal contracts, and hold accountable the perpetrators no matter what title or rank they hold. End quote. Said Steven Jensen, assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office according to court documents.

And as the evidence proved at trial from 2020 to 2022, Burke was a four-star admiral who oversaw US naval operations in Europe, Russia, and most of Africa, and commanded thousands of civilian and military personnel. In December, 2021, Burke ordered his staff to award a contract to Company A to train personnel under Burke's command.

Thereafter, Burke promoted Company A in a failed effort to convince another Senior Navy admiral to award another contract to Company A to conceal the scheme. Burke made several false misleading statements [00:05:00] to the Navy on his required government ethics disclosure forms. In October, 2022, Burke began working at Company A and a yearly starting salary of a half a million dollars, and a grant of 100,000 stock options.

Our next segment is Corruption Junction. I've been writing about money and politics for two decades. I was inspired to write my book Corporatocracy because of the events on January 6th at the U.S. Capitol. One way to think about this book is it is the Supreme Court's horrible Citizens United decision meets the horrifying events on January 6th, so that we are literally on the same page.

Let me read a short excerpt from Corporatocracy. [Reading from Chapter 12 of Corporatocracy]

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Let's take a short break.[00:26:00]

And we're back. Now we get to the heart of the matter, which is the problem of political corruption. My guest, Stephen Richer writes about election administration and has been published in the Boston Globe, The Contrarian and CNN.com. Stephen Richer is a visiting senior fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School.

I'm so glad to have you here today to speak about the State of American democracy. Welcome to this part of the show, which is called Corruption Junction. Thanks for having me. I think you might be the only person I'm interviewing who is literally in the chapter I sent over. Do you have this experience a lot?

Stephen Richer: Actually it's come up quite a bit over the last five years. That's been one of the privileges of being in this position is. I've often said to the team working around me that we had the opportunity to be part of American history. Some of that history is already being written by you and by other scholars and [00:27:00] journalists. That's somewhat satisfying.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Where did you grow up?

Stephen Richer: I grew up in Sandy, Utah. That was a. Really nice place. Easy place. Very beautiful place to grow up.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: What inspired you to become a lawyer?

Stephen Richer: My senior year college, I applied for a Rhodes Scholarship, Marshall Scholarship. I applied to PhD programs in political science. I applied to the CIA and I applied to “The Real World,” the MTV show. The only thing that I got was graduate school, PhD program, university of Chicago. After writing my Master's thesis, I went back to University of Chicago for law school.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: You're the first person to say that they applied to be on MTV.

Stephen Richer: I also applied to be Captain Morgan's assistant where you would go around hawking Captain Morgan products. I thought that would be funny, but I didn't get an interview for that.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: So what inspired you to run for public office?

Stephen Richer: I've long been a political creature. I had worked at some think [00:28:00] tanks. American Enterprise Institute. Cato Institute was very much a movement conservative in the mold of. Goldwater, Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley. Political ideas mattered to me a lot. I started getting involved in elected politics in about 2008. Then I'd always been involved with the Republican Party. I got involved in the Arizona Republican Party and in Maricopa County. The party had long, had a control over all of the countywide seats, and that was very important because we were the fourth largest county in the United States, we made up about 60% of the state of Arizona.

So holding on to countywide seats in Maricopa County was important. It had surrendered the Maricopa County's recorder's office to my predecessor, Adrian Fontes, who's now our Secretary of State. There was some talk about who's going to run against him. There were some things that Adrian did that I disagreed with at the time.

I [00:29:00] was, dare say, pretty critical of him. For those reasons, Adrian and I have since become friends, but I ran against him. As I like to tell Adrian, I won in a landslide victory that out of 2 million votes I won by 4,500. One of the recurring themes that I've had in this podcast are very close elections.

Close elections are the worst for both candidates and for administrators because there's this notion that elections are called on election night, and that's true. If according to the statistical models, the networks can make a call, and that happens when there's a significant gap in the votes that have been tabulated between the top candidate and the second candidate.

When the races are very close, then you have to wait. That can take a matter of days. I will tell you, I've been on both sides of that as a candidate who wasn't running the election, and then as an election [00:30:00] administrator, and it is agonizing. When I was merely a candidate, I remember mixing all sorts of sleep medications, trying to just knock myself out because I was so wired up and it was just such an intense experience. It didn't put me to sleep, it just gave me a stomach ache, so it's not really something that I recommend.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: How do you keep sane in these trying times?

Stephen Richer: What was very important is that my close nuclear family was always 100% supportive. I can't imagine doing this with them, not being 100% supportive. So my heart goes out to election administrators and politicians who don't have that. I am a fantasy book reader. I am an avid sports enthusiast, both playing and watching, and so I have my outlets, but I didn't always manage it well. There were a couple moments that I hit close to the lowest points in my life, live and learn, and hopefully get better.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: I remember hearing [00:31:00] from a woman who ran the elections in Coconino County. She was describing how she had to get ballots to people who live in the Grand Canyon by mule. What was the best thing about running elections in Maricopa County, Arizona?

Stephen Richer: Well, that is a fun story, and it's a true story. Arizona is home to 21 federally recognized tribes, one of which. Supai live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It doesn't make sense to helicopter in ballot boxes and tabulation machines. For a long time, they've been using mules to go down the Grand Canyon. Only 20 or 30 registered voters live down there, but it's really amazing. We have. A number of tribes within Maricopa County and one didn't have any internet, didn't have many electronic outlets, and didn't have running water. That [00:32:00] was always a challenge. Then by the time I was done, we could set up internet there. The reason why we wanted to be able to set up internet is so that we didn't have to use. Paper rosters for who's registered to vote. We could instead connect with our voter registration database and be able to check people in electronically, as we did everywhere else in the county.

In terms of what did I enjoy most about running elections in Maricopa County: just sense of purpose. There are many things in life where wonder, what does this matter in the Grand Cosmos, or even more minutely. Why am I doing this with election administration in Arizona and the amount of attention that has been put on election administration and the history of the vote in this country? I got to be part of something meaningful. That's something I'll always cherish.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: We met in during a Securing Democracy event hosted by Rick Hasen. [00:33:00] You shared voicemails over a loudspeaker. You were getting death threats for running elections in Maricopa County. What was the worst thing about running elections in Maricopa?

Stephen Richer: Those were pretty macabre. I led the country in terms of. Prosecuted threats to election officials. I don't know. That's something I wanted to win, but those started pouring in May of 2021 when a group called the Cyber Ninjas was doing an extracurricular review of the 2020 election that ginned up a bunch of false controversy and a lot of emotion.

It was directed largely at me who was the loudest spokesperson for the fact that the 2020 election hadn't been stolen in Arizona or in Maricopa County. That was certainly not a highlight. Some of the worst parts were. I would say sometimes during election night after polls have closed and you're [00:34:00] going through the same process that's been done in Arizona for many years, but because the contests are closed and because presidential elections have been closed, just the amount of vitriol and hate that is directed at those who are administering elections. Being the public face of the largest county in Arizona, much of that was directed at me when I saw people who I knew, people whom I'd had lunch with say really unpleasant things about me. I guess I got used to it when it's nameless people on the internet or even leaving a threatening voice message. But when it's somebody that you've interacted with. And you hope that person would know your character to then say really ugly things. It never made me feel great.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: How would you describe the reaction to the 2020 election in Arizona?

Stephen Richer: At first, I thought it was a yearning for more [00:35:00] information. About election administration, and that was exciting because it, it showed a real interest in the things that my office was in charge of.

I took it as a challenge to get as much information to into the hands of Arizona public as possible, but it also had an ugly face to it that started the day after. The November 3rd, 2020 election when Alex Jones, Alex Jones is the guy who came up with the Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory. He's a far right provocateur and conspiracy theorists. He got a bunch of people to come to the Tabulation Center with guns and hooting and hollering and yelling in people's faces outside of the election facilities door, “stop the steal.” So it had an ugly face to it. What change was over the period of. 18 months [00:36:00] was I realized that some people were not looking on a good faith level for more information about, say, ballot auditing processes, or how tabulators are certified.

They were looking for confirmation of what they, in their gut felt to be true, which was that. Donald Trump had won the 2020 election and there was nothing I could do for those people. It's something that I banged my head against for four years.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Yeah, I was a Senate staffer for Chuck Robb, Oliver North would get on his radio show and would just tell some random lie. Then our phones would light up like a Christmas tree. We had some factual answers that we were supposed to give back. It was a hopeless task because the person is just screaming at you. They're not listening to anything you're saying. Was the reaction to the 2022 election in [00:37:00] Arizona any different?

Stephen Richer: Well, I, I so agree with.

Your analogous situation, and the only solace I took was that it wasn't specific to election administration, this war on facts or confusion of truth. I've consistently said when people have called me a defender of democracy or defender of the election process, that I think it's more of an epistemological crisis that we're undergoing where we can no longer agree on very provable.

Binary factual situations if they are remotely political. I continue to think that will be one of the great challenges of the next 10, 20, 30 years is facts. Arizona may be moved from a top five state into the top state in terms of the home of election denialism largely centered around a few people the most.

Prominent of whom it was Kari [00:38:00] Lake, a former local TV news anchor who had become very close with President Trump. She narrowly lost the general election. She made a lot of very specific allegations of criminal misconduct by me and the team. It certainly fanned the flames with many in Arizona who had still not gotten over the 2020 election.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Would you be willing to talk about your defamation suit against Kari Lake?

Stephen Richer: Kari filed suit after the election, as of course, that's an appropriate. Mechanism for correcting any wrongs. She lost that suit. She filed another suit. She lost that suit. She appealed. She lost on appeal. She appealed again. She lost on appeal again, and she would make these very specific allegations in these complaints following the election she had. At least constructive knowledge that all of her allegations were without [00:39:00] fact and that they had failed in a court of law into 2023. She continued to talk about them. She continued to go to rallies where she would say very specific things that I had supposedly done, and people would chant lock him up and really whip up people to really hate me and think I'm a heinous criminal who had stolen an election from her. I'd hope that this would blow over after some time when she announced that she was publishing a book, a prominent feature of which would be my alleged criminal wrongdoing, I didn't know where else to go.

We played the last club in our bag and I sued her for defamation. That was before she launched a campaign for US Senate. Following the 2024 election in which she lost for US Senate, we entered into mediation. From that mediation, we reached a settlement that was on terms that were, I think the language I'm [00:40:00] allowed to use is terms that were favorable to me, made me happy.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Were you surprised that you're a Republican you're mostly getting attacked by other Republicans?

Stephen Richer: Yes. I thought that my long history in the party and just even basically my donation record and my record in grassroots activism, my record on campaigning for various Republican candidates, I thought it might.

Afford me some credibility within the Republican circles. One, a lot of the people that I had been affiliated with within the Republican party had become similarly persona non grata. I was closely associated with the McCain family, which had fallen out favor with the grassroots Republican world of Arizona Romney family, the Huntsman family, the Cheney family, all the.

Republicans that I volunteered for on national level campaigns were not the people [00:41:00] that bought somebody credibility anymore within the Republican party. Then whether or not Trump won the 2020 election just became such a litmus test for whether or not you were a Republican in good standing. Given that that was an issue on which I wouldn't budge, and not only would I not budge, but I was rather loud and.

Some would say obnoxious about the fact that I wouldn't budge that. Increasingly, it didn't surprise me that I was out of favor with many within the Republican party.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: One of the things I miss from Twitter was your sass mouth with your Twitter handle, you would take on the trolls and would try to provide them with factual information in a really humorous way. I hope that you're doing some version of that because that was a public service. What are working on at the Ash Center?

Stephen Richer: I appreciate you. It's not everyone who thinks that my Twitter account is a public service, so I'll take that [00:42:00] to the bank. It's a wonderful position that I'm in. I can't say enough good things about the Ash Center, I've been given a great opportunity to put on my academic hat and think more deeply about American democracy and election administrations. I have a weekly calm in the Arizona Republic. I write for Contrarian, I write for Cato. Being here in Cambridge has been a lot of fun. I did chuckle quite a bit in a dark humor way when in March the battle between President Trump and Harvard University began. It just felt like out of the frying pan and into the fire. Happily I am not the decision maker at Harvard. I'm more of a spectator, but fighting some of the same people and some of the same battles that I was dealing with in Maricopa County for the last five years.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: What do you wish the average American should know about election administration?

Stephen Richer: Elections are administered at [00:43:00] 9,000 local jurisdictions. Election law, as listeners of this podcast, undoubtedly know, is largely driven by state law. It's bipartisan. There's no election jurisdictions that are run entirely by Republicans or entirely by Democrats.

You have both in the mix. Two is that there are points of observation. People can be independent observers of voting locations, or they can be partisan observers of ballot tabulation centers. Or you can increasingly go online and you can watch live streaming videos of the process. Third, it is tested.

Nobody in election administration says, let's just. Turn it on and hope it works well. Things like tabulators. We do certifications before the election. We do certifications after the election. Fourth, it's challengeable. Any losing candidate or party has the opportunity to file suit in court. If you take those four dimensions [00:44:00] together, then hopefully that can give you groundwork upon which you can start to build up more confidence in the election system.

So how could election administration be improved? In Arizona, I've been active talking about how we can have a higher percentage of results available within the first 24 hours because I think that hurts some voter confidence when networks can't call the winners within 24 hours. But on a more macro level, I think we need to get better about sharing data and sharing information.

There is no national voter registration database.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Is decentralization of election administration a good or a bad thing?

Stephen Richer: It cuts both ways. Advocates of decentralization would say that it allows us to have laboratories of democracy. And different states can try different things. If it works well in one state, maybe other states will adopt it.

Or if it works well in another one state, [00:45:00] another state might say, well that's, that sounds right for Arizona, but that doesn't really fit what we do here in Pennsylvania and we can both go our happy ways. Advocates would also say that it's a built-in security mechanism. There's no one fail point. There's no one control.

Switch to rig, quote, the national election and quote, it's done at such a diffuse process that you would have to go jurisdiction by jurisdiction if you wanted to try and disrupt election administration. I will say that it is highly anomalous in that. Most countries in the world have a federal election system where everything is done at the national level.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Yeah, I'm very jealous of Elections Canada. It might be because the Canadians are more levelheaded about a lot of things, including how to run an election. Is election denialism corrosive for American democracy?

Stephen Richer: Yes, [00:46:00] I think that it is. Indicative of a broader distrust of everything now and a broader confusion of facts everywhere.

We increasingly live in a world in which you have your facts and I have my facts, and neither the tween shall meet. I don't think that's healthy. If you have. Enough distrust of the electoral process. Eventually, some people say to heck with your authority over me, mayor or governor or president, because I don't believe that you were installed through a credible process and you don't have the consent of the govern, and so I'm going to drop out of society or resist in an unlawful manner, or something like that.

We flirted with that, on January 6th, 2021. I'm happy that Americans are now reporting higher levels of confidence in election administration post 2024 election. We're by no means out [00:47:00] of the woods. Election administrators very much are apprehensive about the 2026 midterm elections. There's something much deeper culturally growing on right now that is just a lack of trust in your fellow citizens.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Are you worried about what artificial intelligence might be deployed in future elections?

Stephen Richer: Different election groups that would tell us about the potential horrors of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election? Not many of those came to manifest. I guess I'm a technology optimist. I think there's a ton of ways in which it can be integrated to better the election system. Artificial intelligence could help choosing where to locate voting locations. Artificial intelligence could help doing things like doing signature verification. Artificial intelligence could help doing things like contacting voters. I've been spending this calendar year thinking about the exciting possibilities more than [00:48:00] the apocalyptic possibilities.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: On my good days, I think AI could be used to translate things for people who are not English speakers, but are still voters. When I'm feeling bad about it, all the disinformation that's in English, you could instantaneously translate into a hundred different languages. Do you have an action item for audience?

Stephen Richer: Courage is contagious. If you can be a courageous person on a matter of great importance to. American rule of law or American democracy, then that courage can have ripple effects. I think that courage is rare. Two, I would say get involved. All election administrators are always putting out the call to people to get involved, whether that's as a temporary election worker or whether it's as a partisan observer of the process or whether that's helping register people at a naturalization ceremony, or whether that's [00:49:00] taking information produced by your election office and delivering it to your local party meetup about how to participate. It's much appreciated because my office had about 160 full-time staff, but we were in a county of 4.7 million people.

Anything that we could get others to do to help spread word was much appreciated.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Where can the audience find your work?

Stephen Richer: You can go on to Twitter at Stephen Richer. You can look for me at the Ash Center website or at Republic Affairs. I'm pretty accessible. I always appreciate hearing from people who care about this subject.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Is there a final thought you'd like to leave with our audience?

Stephen Richer: Get your book. That's the most important thing.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: I did not pay him to say that.

Stephen Richer: Get your book, read it. Gone through, I think half of the chapters so far enjoying it. I think one of the other ways in which [00:50:00] it's been exciting times is there's been a lot of really great scholars who have entered the field of election administration as it's become a hotter topic. Our understanding of election administration is going to continue to get better thanks to faculty within law schools and political science departments.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Well, Stephen Richer, you're such a good sport. Thank you so much for being here today.

Stephen Richer: Of course. Thanks for having me.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Let's take a short break. [00:51:00]

And we're back. As someone who spends her time focused on political corruption, it's easy to end up with a dim view of humanity. One of the things that has kept me happy and sane over the past eight years is my 100 pound chocolate labradoodle. Let me share my life motto with you, which is "Loves dogs hates corruption."

One of the things that you learn when you have a dog is all of the random things that dogs cannot eat. Dogs are not supposed to have garlic, onions, or oddly grapes. Dogs are not allowed to [00:52:00] have chocolate. My doodle seems to have no sense of self preservation. As I've indicated in an earlier episode, when the humans in my house are having a snack, my doodle will demand his fair share.

This is true, even if the humans in the house are eating chocolate. There's a great local chocolatier named William Dean. When we're having a William Dean Chocolate bar, my doodle will ask for some. A common refrain in my house is "no chocolate for chocolate doodles." My dog hates this phrase, but when we are having chocolate, we give him a dog safe treat instead, so he forgives us.

Okay, now back to business.[00:53:00]

Now we get to our final segment. The Fix Is In. Many of the problems with our democracy can seem unfixable, but that is not true. These problems were created by human beings and they can be solved by human beings. We can improve laws and practices. At the local, state, and federal level, a first step is realizing that these are not unsolvable problems. We can fix it. Today, we talked about election administration. One of the ways you can learn about how elections are administered is by volunteering to work during an election. In the old days, that meant working on a Tuesday. Now most states [00:54:00] have weeks of early voting. Which makes it easier for working adults to volunteer.

It's just such a good way to help our democracy function and to learn on a granular level how elections work. You learn that someone cannot vote by mail and in person without being flagged. Voting twice or trying to is a very stupid way to rack up state and federal criminal charges. I encourage you to help out your local election officials.

Just remember, democracy is worth defending and a little truth goes a long way.

 Thank you to my guests for joining me today. This is a production of Ciara Torres-Spelliscy who can be found on social media as ProfCiara, P-R-O-F-C-I-A-R-A. The episode was mixed by WBAI. Our logo is by entire world. Theme Music was composed and performed by [00:55:00] Matt Boehler.

This show is based on the book Corporatocracy, published by NYU Press. This has been “Democracy and Destiny with Ciara Torres- Spelliscy.”

​You can listen to full episode here: https://soundcloud.com/profciara/democracy-destiny-ep-10-with

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