Conspiracy Theorists Want to Run America’s Elections. These Are the Candidates Standing in Their Way

Fontes is running for Arizona secretary of state, a typically anonymous role that oversees the tedious details of election administration: training poll workers, managing the statewide voter-registration database, verifying the accuracy of voting machines, and certifying election results.

Fontes’ opponent, Republican Mark Finchem, is an election denier: an avid promoter of former President Donald Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen through widespread voter fraud.

If any of these candidates win, experts warn, they would possess a broad array of powers to undermine future elections if they don’t like the results.

A rogue election official could attempt to prematurely stop the counting of ballots, pervert the Electoral College process, turn over the outcome of the election to partisan state legislators, or simply refuse to certify the result, all while publicly sowing doubt about the validity of the contest.

“They’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state, to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.”.

Yet Biden’s party was slow to grasp the vital importance of down-ballot contests like secretary of state races.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic candidate Josh Shapiro spent $840,000 on ads that helped lift election denier Doug Mastriano to victory in the GOP gubernatorial primary—more money than Mastriano spent on himself.

6 committee for his alleged work to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election—would appoint Pennsylvania’s next secretary of state, whose powers would include certifying the results in 2024.

A single conspiracy theorist overseeing elections in a swing state could plunge the next presidential race into chaos or even change the result.

After listening to him rattle off various debunked conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines and “mules stuffing ballots in drop boxes,” I asked him a key question: If Biden wins Arizona in 2024, would Finchem certify that result as secretary of state.

Over the years, members of both parties have found reasons to dispute election results they didn’t like.

An analysis by FiveThirtyEight found that of 552 Republicans on the ballot in 2022, 201 have stated that the 2020 election was stolen or taken action to overturn the results, and an additional 61 have “raised questions” about the outcome.

According to this tally, roughly 60% of American voters will have at least one election denier on their ballot in November.

By the end of the primaries, half of all races for governor and more than a third of all races for secretary of state included an election denier, according to States United Action, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to fair elections.

At least 11 GOP nominees for secretary of state—often a state’s top election official—have embraced Trump’s Big Lie.

These candidates are part of a sprawling effort to respond to the result of the last election by seizing control of the next one.

“It’s about making these jobs scary so people leave them,” says Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United Action, “so people who are election deniers can take those positions.”.

Jim Marchant, a former state assembly member and former telecommunications executive, is the Republican nominee for Nevada secretary of state.

In the Electoral College battlegrounds of Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, election deniers have won GOP nominations for secretary of state.

And if Marchant, Finchem, or Michigan GOP secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo—who has also promoted baseless conspiracies— prevail in November, they would be the top election official in a state that could decide the Presidency in 2024.

Yet before the election deniers can radically reshape American democracy, they have to win their races.

6, “we looked back and realized that was the end of the beginning,” says Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat.

“We had to be prepared to endure a multiyear, multifaceted nationally coordinated effort to enable those who tried and failed to undo the results in 2020 to succeed in 2024.”.

Shortly after the 2020 election, she had to rush her young son into the bathtub to hide from Trump supporters who had surrounded her home to angrily protest Michigan’s election results.

Steve Simon, who has been Minnesota secretary of state since 2015, says the tone of this year’s race is different.

Simon, a Democrat, is running for re-election against a Republican who called the 2020 election “the big rig” and “our 9/11.” “In the other races, it was a clash of political differences or policy differences,” he says.

“This is so serious that if I don’t win this election, it could affect the outcome [of the presidential race] in 2024.

At the local level, county clerk candidates are running to defeat election deniers across the country.

Some of the most important Defenders are Republicans who vouched for the integrity of the 2020 election while beating back election deniers in GOP primaries.

In Nebraska, Republican secretary of state Bob Evnen circulated a detailed PowerPoint presentation, titled “Fake vs Fact,” debunking popular conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

In Idaho, Ada county clerk Phil McGrane defeated two election deniers to win the GOP nomination for secretary of state.

Brad Raffensperger, who has served as Georgia secretary of state since 2019, famously resisted Trump’s demands to “find” more than 11,000 votes to tip the results of the 2020 presidential election in the Peach State.

Fontes is there to explain why voters should care about the secretary of state race.

For iVote, the group supporting Democratic candidates for secretary of state, its $15 million budget this year is more than double what it spent in 2018