Meet the Faces of Democracy: Bill Gates

Bill Gates, a registered Republican, was re-elected to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in 2020 after first being elected in 2016. Before joining the Board of Supervisors, he served on the Phoenix City Council for seven years, from 2009 to 2016, including a term as vice mayor in 2013.

Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, is the fourth-largest county in the United States, and it is second-largest voting jurisdiction in the country, with about 2.5 million active, registered voters and about 4.5 million residents. Gates represents roughly 900,000 residents as a supervisor for District 3.

Maricopa County became a hotspot for election conspiracies after Republican President Donald Trump lost the county to Democrat Joe Biden by about 45,000 votes, or 2% of the votes cast. The scrutiny of the vote count included official post-election audits as well as a partisan review of the results by an outside firm known as the Cyber Ninjas, which was hired by pro-Trump Republicans in the Arizona Senate. Each of the reviews confirmed Biden’s victory. Throughout it all, Gates weathered threats and harassment, later admitting he developed post-traumatic stress disorder from his experiences.

For decades, Gates has been an active Republican. In high school, he founded the Teenage Republican Club, and later, he was an officer in the Iowa Federation of College Republicans. In the early 2000s, he served as a legislative district chair for the Arizona Republican Party and as the secretary of the Maricopa County Republican Committee. In 2006 and 2008, he led the Arizona Republican Party’s election integrity efforts, organizing groups of poll watchers and attorneys.

Outside of work, Gates is deeply involved in his community. With a law degree from Harvard Law School, he has been particularly active in law-related education, serving as a regional coordinator and attorney coach at both the high school and intercollegiate levels. Additionally, he is helping to organize the 2025 National High School Mock Trial Championship in Phoenix.

Gates has received various awards for his leadership and service, including the Maricopa County Bar Association’s 2023 Public Lawyer of the Year, the Ed Pastor 2023 Public Servant Award, and the Truman Foundation’s Joseph E. Stevens Public Service Award in 2022.

Since 2022, he has been part of Issue One’s Faces of Democracy campaign advocating for protections for election workers and for regular, predictable, and sufficient federal funding of elections.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Issue One: How did you end up in this profession? 

Bill Gates: I initially got involved about 20 years ago as a volunteer lawyer for the Republican Party. I would help to organize poll observers on Election Day. I first started in Navajo County, which is in northeastern Arizona, and then by 2006 and 2008, I was serving in this role for the Arizona Republican Party statewide.

After that, I ran for the Phoenix City Council and served there for 7 years. And in 2016, ran for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. In 2019, when I was the chair of the Board of Supervisors, we negotiated with the county recorder at that time, Adrian Fontes, to take back all of our statutory responsibilities. So now we have a collaborative effort in Maricopa County for how we run elections. With the 2020 and 2022 elections, I became fully involved in some fairly famous elections here and just had an incredible opportunity to work closely with everybody on the team. This really is my life’s work.

Issue One: What part of the election administration story in Arizona do you think is not told or widely understood enough? 

Bill Gates: I think that people do not understand the size of Maricopa County and the breadth of the effort to run an election here. We are actually the second-largest voting jurisdiction in the country. We have about 2.5 million registered voters, so every time we run a countywide election, it involves thousands of individuals, including thousands of temporary employees.

People don’t understand that the people running these elections are your neighbors. It is your aunt. It is your uncle. It is your mother. That human element is really important.

Issue One: In your job, how have you worked to bring more transparency to the world of election administration? 

Bill Gates: I would like to think that is something that we have excelled at in Maricopa County. Following the 2020 election, we could have gone in two different directions. We could have hidden in the corner and said we are just going to do our jobs and let the world go by. Or we could swing the doors open and shine a light on everything we have done, which is exactly what we have done.

We have absolutely transformed our communications system. In the 2022 election, working with the recorder, we held 16 press conferences before and after the election. As far as I know, that is the most election officials here have ever done. We knew the attention that was on us because we had a lot of high-profile statewide offices, and we had many candidates that had questioned the results of the 2020 election.

After the 2021 Cyber Ninja audit that the Arizona Senate started, they would share updates from the Cyber Ninjas, and for the most part, they were simply spewing misinformation. So we decided to transform our social media to live tweet as these statements were being made. We were live tweeting our responses and debunking the misinformation.

Also, we have swung the doors open to the community. We have held numerous tours of Maricopa County’s tabulation center. We bring people in here — and not just those who feel very comfortable with our election system and have no questions. We have opened it up to everyone, and that has been incredibly helpful in getting the word out. Finally, we have live stream cameras on our tabulation center running 24/7 so if people have questions about what is going on, they can sit in their house and watch it on their laptops. These are just some of the measures that we have made to expand that transparency. We are very fortunate in Maricopa County to have the resources to do those sorts of things.

Issue One: Why do you think that voters should have trust in election processes and results, specifically in Arizona? 

Bill Gates: In the past few election cycles, it has taken approximately 10 to 13 days to complete the count. There are other states that take that long, but they do not have the close elections that we do. Our races may take several days because they are close and because of the processes. To dig into that a little bit more, people should have faith because we have eyes on everything — Republican eyes and Democratic eyes. If you are a Republican, you need to know there are advocates on behalf of your party, on behalf of your candidates, who are watching everything.

A lot of people think a hand count would be a solution to strengthen confidence. A hand count is not a feasible approach in a jurisdiction like ours with 2.5 million registered voters. A lot of people do not realize that we do hand counts as a part of the audit process in Maricopa County. We select a small but a statistically significant percentage of votes to hand count and if we see variances between the hand count and the machine count, then we expand the universe of votes that get hand counted. We just had a hand count audit in our primary election, and guess what? It came out exactly the same.

Various other transparency measures that we have, including the live stream cameras, make people feel good about our election results. I would argue that the 2020 and the 2022 elections were the most examined elections in our country’s history, especially in Maricopa County. If there was something going on, we would know about it. Everyone would know about it.

If voters want to have more confidence in the process, take us up on our offer and come take a tour of our election facility. I’ve never had anybody walk out of that and say, “I feel worse about things than I did when I walked in this building.”

Issue One: In the United States, election administration is not centralized. Instead, 50 states have 50 different systems. In Arizona, both the county recorder and the director of elections play essential roles in administering elections. What are some key differences between the two roles? And how does the Board of Supervisors fit in? 

Bill Gates: The county recorder is responsible for voter registration and vote by mail. Vote by mail now in Arizona is running around 85% in every election. A county’s director of elections, who reports to the Board of Supervisors, is responsible for all in-person voting, both in-person early voting and in-person on Election Day. In addition, the director of elections is responsible for the tabulation of votes. Finally, the Board of Supervisors is responsible for certifying the results of the election.

Issue One: Many people are surprised to learn that the federal government doesn’t routinely fund the costs of running elections. Why do you think the federal government should routinely contribute to election administration costs? 

Bill Gates: In the United States, as opposed to many other countries, we run elections at the local level. This is a strength of our system, that those who are the closest to the people are running elections. For those who are concerned about alleged conspiracies to rig elections, it makes it a lot harder when you literally have thousands of jurisdictions.

For those of us who are in elections, like me in Maricopa County, where we are in 50 lines of business as the Board of Supervisors, that means our residents count on us for lots of services. It is unfair, and I would argue it is undemocratic to force us at the local level to make choices between things such as addressing the housing affordability issue, or making sure our elections are run efficiently, or making sure that our citizens are safe. That is not fair for us at the local level to be making those decisions. In the end, this is a federal responsibility. The federal government should be providing sufficient resources so that elections can be run safely and accurately, and frankly so that the local jurisdictions can respond to all that misinformation that is out there.

Issue One: What is the price tag of running an election in your jurisdiction, and where does funding for election administration in your jurisdiction come from? 

Bill Gates: Our residents in Maricopa County help fund our elections through taxes. We do also get some funding from the state. And sometimes, there will be funding that will come down from the federal government, but it is not something that we can rely upon.

While my colleagues and I always say that you cannot put a price tag on democracy, the price tag can run into the tens of millions of dollars to run an election here in Maricopa County.

Issue One: If your jurisdiction had extra funding, how would you spend it? 

Bill Gates: We have needs from a capital perspective that we would spend it on. We have been in the same building now for decades. We are going to be building a new facility as our county continues to grow. We have been one of the fastest-growing counties in the country for years. Not only is it important that we have good facilities for our workers, but it’s also important that we have the space that we need.

We need a lot of space to run elections because we have a lot of people who are involved in all steps of the election process. We also need to build a facility that is built with transparency in mind. People who go into election administration do not do it to get rich, that is for sure, but we want to make sure that we can compensate these people who are doing such important jobs to a level that we can get the best and the brightest. So, I would use additional funding on capital, I would use it on people, and I would also, unfortunately, need to continue to invest in security for our facilities, our workers, and our voters.

Issue One: Last year, you came to Washington, D.C., to meet with lawmakers and policymakers as a part of a bipartisan advocacy push organized by Issue One. What was that experience like for you and why was it so important to speak with members of Congress about issues like increased election funding and protections for election workers? 

Bill Gates: I was very grateful to join other elections officials from across the country. That was one of the best parts, getting to meet people, and share experiences, best practices, and challenges that we have faced in the past few years. There is nothing like being able to talk through that. It is very healthy and very informative to learn best practices from other election officials.

Going to Congress was a great experience. Our representatives in Congress are focused on so many issues every day. To have folks come in — particularly members of their own party, so for me, meeting with my fellow Republicans on the Hill — and telling them the experiences that we have had, the challenges we face, and for them to look us in the eyes and and see the passion that we have for elections, and for our workers, was extremely helpful, especially for Arizona. You know, if you live in Delaware or something, it is just a short train ride to Washington, D.C., but for those of us in Arizona, it takes us a day to get to D.C.. To be able to have that opportunity and the partnership of Issue One, we are so grateful for that. I certainly hope that down the road, this will make a difference and help members of Congress understand just how important that federal investment in local elections is.

Issue One: What’s your elevator pitch for why someone should work as a poll worker this year? 

Bill Gates: There is no more important time to be a poll worker than right now, when we have folks who are raising questions — some legitimate, some illegitimate — about how our elections run. We need you to go out and evangelize in your community about what it means to work on elections, to be able to respond to a lot of the unfair criticisms out there.

If you have questions about elections, then I absolutely want you to volunteer as a poll worker, because then you can have those questions answered! And I am confident that you will have those questions answered!

And if you care about this election and feel strongly about one side or the other, I definitely want you to be involved, because if you have been involved, then you can have confidence that the results are accurate and that the election was run in a way that all of us as Americans can feel good about.

If you are on the edge, trying to decide whether to work as a poll worker, do it. It is not too late to get involved. Call your local elections office [or visit PowerThePolls.org/IssueOne].

The other thing to note is there are many types of jobs. Everyone thinks you are just checking in voters and handing them a ballot. But there are so many different jobs. Maybe you like to drive. In Maricopa County, we are really spread out. We have drivers who take supplies out to our vote centers.

Issue One: In 2023, you announced that you would not be running for reelection. Can you tell us how you came to this decision and what is next for you? 

Bill Gates: Some people will say that I ran off from this because of all the harassment, the death threats, and things like that. That is absolutely not the case. This was a decision that I spent a lot of time making with my wife and our daughters. At the end of this year, it will be 15 years in elected office for me, between the Phoenix City Council and the Board of Supervisors. It felt like the right time to move on from this and to give someone else the opportunity to work on the Board of Supervisors, which by the way, is the best job in the world. I want people to understand I am not running away from elections or what has happened here. I have loved every minute of it.

I am moving on to Arizona State University where I will be a professor in the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. I will also be the executive director of the Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory, so I am going to continue in this space and work with my colleagues to help train the next generation of election administrators and to help provide continuing education to those who are already in election administration. We look forward to convening experts both here in Arizona as well as at our Los Angeles and D.C. campuses, to have discussions about best practices, do research, and help push back on misinformation. I am really excited about this next chapter.

Issue One: Outside of being passionate about running safe and secure elections, what are your hobbies, or what is a fun fact that most people might not know about you? 

Bill Gates: I play golf. I love to hike here in Maricopa County on all of our beautiful trails. I love to watch movies with my wife and our girls. And I love listening to music. People probably do not know that I have a very wide range of musical tastes going from yacht rock to hip hop.

Issue One: What is your favorite book or movie? 

Bill Gates: My favorite movie is a movie called “Somewhere In Time.” It is from the 1980s, and it is the story of Christopher Reeve going to the Grand Hotel in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and he falls in love with a woman in a picture from the early 20th century [played by Jane Seymour]. He must then travel through time to meet her. I am really into time travel.

Issue One: Which historical figure would you have most liked to have had an opportunity to meet? 

Bill Gates: I am fascinated by the French Revolution. I would have loved to have met Robespierre and talked with him about that whole experience, the uplifting power of democracy and also its very ugly side.

Note: This piece was cross-published with The Fulcrum.