‘The center of the storm’: Arizona’s election chief prepares for a disinformation battle

Arizona was the epicenter for bogus claims about voter fraud and stolen elections four years ago. And with the 2024 election nearly two weeks away , the state’s top election administrator is bracing for another disinformation battle.

“There’s no way to avoid the repeat,” Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told the POLITICO Tech podcast. “We are the center of the storm when it comes to election denialism.”

Fontes’ office has been preparing for over a year to confront election threats this cycle by fortifying systems against cyber attacks, monitoring social media disinformation and training to spot AI-generated deepfakes , he said.

But the political actors peddling election lies — namely foreign adversaries like Russia and China, and the Americans who “betray their own country” by spreading their messages — have also gotten more organized and tactical, Fontes warns.

“Everybody's just gotten a little more sophisticated, I guess, in this battle for the truth,” he said. “But luckily, we've got the truth on our side, so those guys will lose eventually.” Listen to the full interview .

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