“马里科帕是一个非常、非常不诚实的县，”特朗普总统上周对记者说。
“Maricopa is a very, very dishonest county,” President Donald Trump told reporters last week.
人们可能会原谅自己认为自己时光倒流回到了2020年总统大选后那段混乱的几周和几个月，当时亚利桑那州的马里科帕县成为选举否认运动的焦点。
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.
但马里科帕县和选举否认者们又回来了。距离中期选举还有两周多的时间，极端主义选举活动人士正试图破坏人们对投票过程的信任，并加大力度制造混乱和恐惧。其中核心是重新使用过去常见的论调，包括马里科帕县在某种程度上存在腐败的说法。
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.
“目前，人们把马里科帕视为选举谣言的焦点，”华盛顿大学知情公众中心联合创始人凯特·斯塔伯德对《连线》杂志说。“2020年，记号笔墨水渗透选票；2022年，计票机无法读取选票。马里科帕已成为一个熟悉的场景，选举问题在此产生或被认为产生，而这些问题又被包裹进‘选举被操纵’的阴谋论中。”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FBI扣押了数十台包含赛博忍者审计数据的硬盘和服务器时，政府重新将注意力集中在该县。
“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.”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.
上周，当特朗普告诉记者该县选举官员在3000张选票因错误提前邮寄后“应该为自己感到羞耻”时，这种关注进一步加剧。
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.
但上周末，随着“我们人民美国联盟”（We the People USA Alliance）发布了一段带有标题“BUSTED”的视频，谣言迅速升温。该组织是2020年马里科帕县选举舞弊无根据指控的核心力量。
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.”
该视频显示，两名马里科帕县员工于10月7日晚间在选票计票中心工作。该帖子暗示他们通过“在选举进行期间将闪存驱动器插入电脑……”来篡改设备。该帖子还点名了一名马里科帕县员工，该员工曾在2021年同样遭受无根据的指控和威胁。
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.”The post also named a Maricopa County employee, who was previously targeted with similarly unfounded claims and threats back in 2021.
该视频迅速获得超过100万次观看，部分得益于卡里·莱克（Kari Lake）等人物的推动。她曾是电视明星，现为特朗普政府的高级顾问，并在2022年和2024年分别竞选州长和美国参议员落败时，也曾推动过关于马里科帕县选举舞弊的指控。
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.
“马里科帕县选票计票中心又出花招，”莱克在X上写道。“只有通过上帝的干预，这才被发现。”但提供视频给该组织的并不是上帝。马里科帕县通讯副选举主管詹妮弗·利维尔（Jennifer Liewer）告诉《WIRED》，该片段是从一个非公开的备份直播摄像头中截取的，该摄像头一直在运行，但目前不是县网站上可用的直播摄像头之一。
“More shenanigans at the Maricopa county ballot tabulation center,” Lake wrote on X. “Only through God’s intervention was this even discovered.”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.
一位知情人士告诉《WIRED》，该人士未获授权对记录发表评论，称“我们人民”组织的成员多年前就获得了该摄像头的IP地址，据称这使他们能够继续监控它。“我们人民美国联盟”未回应置评请求。
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.
马里科帕县监督委员会上周发布声明，驳斥了该说法，澄清称员工们“正在进行授权且必要的工作，以更新软件并将选举数据上传至一台未连接互联网或选票计票设备的计算机终端。”对此解释不满意的“我们人民美国联盟”创始人、共和党全国委员会（RNC）代表谢尔比·布施随后联系了与特朗普关系密切的马里科帕县记录官贾斯汀·希普。根据希普的幕僚长的说法，他的办公室随后联系了FBI以调查此事。
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.”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.
FBI请来了亚利桑那州总检察长办公室的一名调查员进行调查，根据12News所见的报告副本，他们很快得出结论：没有可调查的内容。“选举诚信是FBI的首要任务之一，我们将继续全天候工作，追踪试图破坏我们体制和法治的犯罪分子，”FBI对《WIRED》表示。RNC和布施未对置评请求作出回应。
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. The RNC and Busch did not respond to a request for comment.
FBI的调查已结案，但未能平息阴谋论。周四，布施出现在史蒂夫·班农的《战争室》播客节目中，重复称有不法之事发生，并表示她已联系国土安全部和司法部，以进一步调查此事。“有人能介入这里吗？”班农回应道。司法部、国土安全部和白宫均未对置评请求作出回应。
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. “Can somebody get involved here?”Bannon replied. The Justice Department, DHS, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
“选举谣言包含相同或极其相似的叙事套路，使其易于被受众消化，也便于谣言制造者进行再创作，”斯塔伯德表示，她的团队已制作出一张此类套路的宾果卡。“马里科帕县已成为选举谣论中的一个套路、一个可疑的场景。它是构建新谣言或阴谋论的现成基石。”
“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.”