PHOENIX — With Tuesday’s primary victories in Arizona and Michigan added to those in Nevada and Pennsylvania, Republicans who have challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and who threaten to undermine the next are on track to gain decisive control of the election. perform in several countries on the battlefield.
Running in a year in which GOP voters are charged with fierce disapproval of President Biden, these newly minted Republican candidates for secretary of state and governor pose a growing risk to the nation’s traditions of nonpartisan elections, acceptance of election results, and orderly transfers of power .
They each spread lies about fraud and illegitimate ballots supporting the failed attempt to overturn the 2020 results and keep former President Donald J. Trump in power. Their history of anti-democratic impulses has prompted Democrats, democracy experts and even some fellow Republicans to question whether these officials would oversee fair elections and certify winners they did not support.
There is no doubt that victories for these candidates in November could lead to radical changes in the way millions of Americans vote. Several have proposed eliminating postal voting, drop-in ballot boxes and even the use of electronic voting machines, while empowering party election observers and expanding their roles.
“If one of these election deniers wins statewide office, it’s a five-alarm fire for our elections,” said Joanna Lydgate, chief executive of the Center for United States Democracy, a bipartisan legal watchdog. “This could throw our elections into chaos.” This could put our democracy at risk.
In Arizona, Republicans nominated Mark Finchem, who marched outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest Mr. Biden’s victory, for secretary of state, the state’s top election official. They also nominated Abraham Hamadeh, who has called his opponents and other Republicans “weak” for supporting certification in the 2020 election, as their nominee for attorney general.
And with votes still being counted, Carrie Lake, who said she would not certify a 10,000-vote victory for Mr. Biden in her state, had a slight lead in the GOP primary for governor.
Both Ms Lake and Mr Fincham have made their willingness to flout some democratic norms and the promotion of conspiracy theories central to their campaigns. Ms Lake said she did not believe the state was holding fair elections. Even before the votes were cast, Mr Finchem was preparing for a recount of his race “if there was even the slightest hint of impropriety”.
“There will be no concession speech from this man,” he said in June.
On Tuesday, both Ms. Lake and Mr. Finchem said there had been fraud in the state primary.
Find out about the August 2 primary
As Trump’s wing of the GOP flexed its muscles, voters in deep-red Kansas delivered a strong warning to the GOP on abortion rights.
In Michigan, Tudor Dixon, who at times falsely claimed that Mr. Trump won the state in 2020 (he lost by more than 150,000 votes), won the Republican nomination for governor, while Christina Karamo, who called the 2020 election . rigged and falsely claimed that Dominion’s voting machine software had tipped votes to Mr. Biden, the party’s presumptive nominee for secretary of state. Matthew De Pernod, the presumptive GOP nominee for attorney general, has been a central player in Michigan’s 2020 election challenges and has vowed to investigate current state officials.
They join Jim Marchant, the Republican candidate for Nevada secretary of state who has said he would not certify in 2020 and wants more sheriffs at the polls, and Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, who is leading the push to overturn the state’s 2020 results. If he wins, Mr. Mastriano will appoint Pennsylvania’s top election official.
Although state legislatures write the laws governing the conduct of elections, secretaries of state have significant power over the conduct of elections, often determining how resources are allocated and what rules local officials must follow. During the pandemic, secretaries of state ordered a mass mailing of absentee ballot applications in an effort to make voting safer.
As top election officials, secretaries of state can also use their power to discourage voting and undermine trust. In several states, they can order investigations or extensive audits, potentially legitimizing false election claims or pressuring local election officials to conduct unnecessary counts and look for non-existent fraud.
Secretaries of state and governors also play a central role in officially certifying election winners, a largely ceremonial act but one through which Mr. Trump’s allies are trying to block the results. Although many legal experts say the courts are unlikely to agree, the prospect of a rogue governor or secretary of state refusing to certify an election could create the atmosphere for a constitutional crisis.
In Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada, Republican candidates for secretary of state (or governors who would appoint them) have indicated or directly stated that they would not certify the 2020 election.
“They can derail the counting, filing and certification of ballots, and that’s really damaging,” said Benjamin Ginsburg, a prominent Republican election lawyer who has criticized efforts to undermine the election process. “They said they would check registration more tightly, they could reduce polling places in unfriendly Republican precincts, they could put up a wide variety of barriers to voting — which would hurt the basic principle of every legal voter being able to vote.”
Governors rejecting lies about the 2020 election have stopped Republican-controlled state legislatures from passing new laws that would restrict voting or give partisan lawmakers more control over election administration. In the past two years, the governors of Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania have vetoed nine bills that would have added voting restrictions, according to the Voting Rights Lab.
Many of these proposals were part of a push for “election integrity,” responding to unfounded concerns among Republican voters about fraud. (Despite Mr. Trump’s claims, there was no fraud in the 2020 election that affected the outcome, and nearly all of his claims have been repeatedly debunked by local election officials, law enforcement and the courts.)
With a sympathetic Republican governor or secretary of state, such sweeping policies could become a reality, as could other, more drastic, right-wing goals.
Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump, wrote on social media that when Ms. Lake, Mr. Hamadeh and Mr. Finchem take office in Arizona, “that’s when the actual recount and the Biden election will happen will be removed’. He was referring to the theory that the 2020 election could still be rigged, which has no legal basis in the Constitution. Mr. Bannon added that once that happens, “Arizona will be FREE.”
Both Ms Lake and Mr Finchem have made bold plans to overhaul the state’s elections. They recently filed a lawsuit seeking to ban the use of electronic voting machines, and Mr. Finchem previously tried to overturn Arizona’s long-established and widely popular vote-by-mail system.
If they win, they are likely to find support for their election proposals in the Republican-controlled Legislature. One potential hurdle fell on Tuesday when Rusty Bowers, who as House Republican speaker has blocked the most extreme efforts to overturn the 2020 results, lost his primary bid for a state Senate seat.
Some Democrats are preparing to portray these candidates as dangerous extremists.
“We’re going to focus on getting back to stability and predictability,” said Adrian Fontes, who is leading the Democratic primary for Arizona secretary of state, and said he would focus on the “wild-eyed fanaticism” of Republicans, including Mr. Finchem. “They’ve gone so far down this rabbit hole that I don’t think they can see the light of day.”
It’s unclear how many top Democrats will try to woo voters about threats to democracy in the fall. Some senior party officials believe that while the issue may motivate engaged Democratic voters, it is unlikely to persuade voters who are more focused on gas prices, inflation and health care. These Democrats believe that painting Republicans as extreme on abortion, for example, can be more effective than focusing on the mechanics of elections.
Still, money poured into some races for bureaucratic posts. Fundraising by candidates for secretary of state in six battleground states has now topped $16 million, more than double the same period last cycle, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The analysis found that the fundraising race so far appears to be slightly favoring candidates running against election deniers.
The next big test comes next week in Wisconsin, where Republican gubernatorial candidates have pledged to overhaul the state’s election system in response to unsubstantiated claims of trouble in 2020. All of the GOP major candidates in the race have pledged to eliminate the Wisconsin Election Commission, a bipartisan agency. , which oversees state elections. It was created by Republicans in 2015, but the party turned to it after commissioners issued guidelines that made it easier to vote during the pandemic.
Republicans are trying to oust Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who, after the 2020 election, vetoed more than a dozen bills proposed by the Republican-controlled Legislature to change the way Wisconsinites vote. The legislation, among other things, would have allowed lawmakers to withhold money for the election commission, make it harder for voters confined to their homes to vote remotely and…
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