Steve Benen has a freakout about potential ballot-counting snafus in the near future:
An NPR analysis of 2022 secretary of state races across the country found at least 15 Republican candidates running who question the legitimacy of President Biden’s 2020 win, even though no evidence of widespread fraud has been uncovered about the race over the last 14 months. In fact, claims of any sort of fraud that swung the election have been explicitly refuted in state after state, including those run by Republicans.
As we’ve discussed, it’s likely that for many American voters, secretary of state — at the state level, not the cabinet secretary who leads the U.S. State Department — is a fairly obscure government office. These officials tend to work behind the scenes on unglamorous tasks such as election administration, and few reach the household-name level.
But in the wake of the Republican Party’s Big Lie, and Donald Trump’s ongoing fixation on installing allies in key positions, secretaries of state — and this year’s campaigns to elect secretaries of state — have taken on extraordinary importance.
Franita Tolson, an election law expert at the University of Southern California, told NPR, “The reasons why Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election failed is because there were state officials who refused to substantiate his claims of fraud. These folks really are gatekeepers.”
It any are elected, it wouldn’t hurt to send them a note, citing the relevant statute, noting that a failure to carry out the duties of the office to which they’ve been elected will result in a fine and/or jail time.
It’s one thing to run around in circles when there’s no real cost, and quite another when the road of reality is about to come up and smack you in the face.
