One Man’s Stand Against Election Denialism
Two scenes from ‘Denial,’ a short documentary by The New Yorker, which shows the effect of election conspiracies in the crucial jurisdiction of Maricopa County, Arizona, through the experience of one elected official, County Supervisor Bill Gates (above).
The New Yorker
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors typically meets in a room in a building in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. The members sit in swivel chairs on a dais, in front of a blue wall emblazoned with the county seal. It’s the kind of banal municipal setting that, in recent years, has become the backdrop for theatrical scenes of turmoil and confrontation. “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution necessary,” a woman says, her voice heavy with emotion, during the public-comment portion of a Board of Supervisors meeting. Another woman uses her allotted time to quote the Bible: “Let them be as snails that dissolve into slime, and as those who die at birth who never see the sun. . . . The godly shall rejoice in the triumph of the right. They shall walk in the bloodstained fields of slaughtered, wicked men.” “You are the cancer that is tearing this nation apart!” a man with blond dreadlocks says, speaking in a menacing growl, as if he’s auditioning for a metal band. “Thank you,” Supervisor Bill Gates replies. Then he introduces the next speaker.
The board members may seem like unlikely recipients of such vitriol. But, since Donald Trump narrowly lost Arizona in 2020, they have come under immense pressure as Maricopa County—the state’s most populous county and the source of the majority of its Democratic votes—has become a focus of those seeking to engineer a different outcome. That year, the filmmaker Paul Moakley watched from afar as a hostile crowd massed outside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center while the ballots were being counted. Protesters wrapped themselves in Trump flags and carried AR-15-style rifles; on a bullhorn, the political commentator and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones warned of “another 1776.” Two years later, Moakley and Daniel Lombroso travelled to Arizona to follow Gates during the week before the 2022 midterm election, when election denial was, once again, in the spotlight. The result is “Denial,” a short film that explores the corrosive effects of election conspiracies through the experience of one elected official in one crucial jurisdiction.
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