Since Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, election deniers have come to outnumber other election administrators in 15 counties in key swing states, leading voting rights advocates to warn that their efforts to delay vote counts could create uncertainty and allow for the spread of disinformation.
A major report from the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) highlighted the elevated threat to the ability to call races definitively and allow for the peaceful transition of power following the November election. It identified more than 200 public and Republican Party officials in swing states who either deny the 2020 election results, have refused to certify previous elections, or spread disinformation about widespread voter fraud.
The report also identified 15 counties in six swing states where election deniers effectively wield control over election administration. In Arizona, these are Cochise and Mohave counties; in Georgia: Spalding County; in Michigan: Wayne County; in New Mexico: Otero County; in Nevada: Lander, Nye, and Washoe counties; and in Pennsylvania: Berks, Bradford, Butler, Fayette, Lancaster, Schuylkill, and Westmoreland counties.
In Pennsylvania, which has the largest number of counties with election deniers running elections, at least 33 county officials throughout the state have made public statements in person or on social media supporting Trump’s endless election lies or policies rooted in election denialism.
Many of these election administrators are also steeped in other conspiracy theories, often ones that are racist, sexist, and Islamophobic.
And, despite expressing outright denialism, many of these election administrators have been able to retain their official standing thanks to sympathetic local governments. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, six of the seven Republican county council members are election denialists who closed ranks to prevent a Democratic-led effort to remove one denialist from her position.
What’s more, in swing states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, election officials have been receiving targeted ads from groups with ties to the Election Integrity Network — the right-wing nonprofit run by extremist MAGA lawyer Cleta Mitchell — falsely purporting that the certification of elections is optional rather than obligatory.
“The important thing to know is that these county-level election officials, even if they try to go rogue, it’s not the end of the story,” Matt Cohen, a senior researcher with Democracy Docket, told CMD. “If they refuse to certify, it doesn’t mean the election isn’t called fairly. There are mechanisms to make sure that it is,” and, though those mechanisms vary from state to state, most states allow for a court order compelling certification.
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