Today the NYT published an article, "Campaigning to Oversee Elections while Denying the Last One." They report that nearly two dozen "brazenly partisan" Trump supporters who deny or dispute the results of thed 2020 election are now campaigning for the office of secretary of state across the country-- an office largely devoted to the overseeing of state elections. Secretaries of state play an important role in making and enforcing state regulations and rules for elections. If they have usually worked outside of the limelight, that changed in 2020 when Trump and his inner circle pressured several of them to overturn the results-- perhaps most famously in the publicly aired phone conversation between Trump and Georgia's Sec of State, Brad Rafensberger, in which Trump pressured Rafensberger for about 30 minutes demanding that he "come up with 11,780 votes" (the number that would have thrown the election to Trump). Rafensberger, and other Republican and Democratic Secretaries of State in 2020 refused to fabricate results on demand for Trump. But what if the Secretaries of State and local election boards in 2024 in crucial battleground states are Trump-supporting "Big Lie" proponents bent on making sure Trump or his successor candidate wins by hook or crook? This is the prospect we now face if these candidates win, particularly in crucial battleground states like Michigan and Arizona. The NYT writes that while many of the candidates are running in solid red states:
"several others, who have formed a coalition calling itself the America First slate, are running in states won by Mr. Biden in 2020, including in the crucial battleground states of Michigan, Arizona and Nevada."
and that:
"The [America First] coalition’s members are coordinating talking points and sharing staff members and fund-raising efforts — an unusual degree of cooperation for down-ballot candidates from different states. They are in strong position to win Republican primaries in those battleground states, as well as in somewhat-bluer Colorado and heavily Democratic California."
The article is long and detailed, so rather than summarizing it here, I'll provide a link. This is an important development in the growing and increasingly well-funded and organized anti-democratic Tumpist movement that now dominates the GOP. Earlier today, Germaine reported an alarming statement made by Trump and his supporters that Pence had the legal right to overturn the election single-handedly on January 6 of last year, but "chose not to exercise" that power. Clearly the gauntlet has been thrown down, and if Biden and the Dems do not use their narrowing window of opportunity to make sure there is no ambiguity in election laws, there is a real possibility that democratic elections as we know them will end in 2024. If Trump loyalists control election boards, and occupy the offices of Sec. of State in key states in 2024, the results could be disastrous for election integrity and democracy.
NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/30/us/politics/election-deniers-secretary-of-state.html
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