‌‌‌‌‌Election Deniers Win Big In Swing State GOP Primaries

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Across the country last week, Republican candidates who’ve lied about the 2020 election, and who’ve vowed to interfere with the democratic process, won key races. 

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A Big Election Day For Election Deniers

With Kari Lake’s victory in the ARIZONA‘s GOP gubernatorial primary confirmed after a few days of uncertainty, we can now say that Republicans who’ve lied about election fraud are the GOP’s picks for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in both Arizona and MICHIGAN (pending a formal nominating convention this month in the latter state). In KANSAS, Kris Kobach, who for years has been a leading voice on Republican efforts to restrict the franchise, is the GOP nominee for secretary of state.  

Those victories by election deniers last week added to Republican primary wins for like-minded candidates earlier in the year in PENNSYLVANIA, NEVADA and elsewhere. 

One interesting aspect of last week’s primaries: Even candidates who won spread conspiracy theories about the elections in which they triumphed. What can we say, it’s a hard habit to break. 

Cleta Mitchell’s Campaign Against Expanding The Franchise 

I like to keep up with Cleta Mitchell, the right-wing attorney and former Trump legal advisor, because she’s an influential voice in conservative circles when it comes to election laws.

You remember “Zuckerbucks,” or this idea that grant money from Mark Zuckerberg influenced election officials to, somehow, boost Biden’s chances in 2020? Well, Mitchell has a new buzzword: “Bidenbucks.” At an event earlier this year that she recorded and just released on her podcast, Mitchell said the Biden administration’s efforts to expand the franchise by making voter registration easier — primarily by having federal agencies offer Americans opportunities to register to vote — are in fact a stealthy way to use taxpayer dollars to register Democrats. She compared it to Jesse Jackson’s “Rainbow Coalition.” 
 

“That was their goal: ‘If we can mobilize people of color and get them registered to vote, we can change America,’” she said of Jackson’s campaign. Mitchell added later, referring to statistics of people who come in contact with the federal government, and who could benefit from the voter registration effort: “We see people who are in need, who are hurting, who need help. You know what the left sees when they see those numbers? Voters! Votes.” 

Around The States

There reportedly will be no early voting locations planned for college campuses in Fulton County, GEORGIA this year. The largest county in Georgia is home to the bulk of the city of Atlanta, including the campuses of Georgia State, Georgia Tech, Morehouse, Spelman, and other institutions. On-campus early voting options did exist during the 2018 and 2020 elections.
 

The NORTH CAROLINA State Board of Elections voted to recognize the state’s Green Party, a month after voting the opposite way due to “irregularities” in signatures gathered on the party’s behalf. However, because the July 1 deadline for party nominees has passed, the decision of whether the party’s candidates would appear on the ballot this November — most importantly Matthew Hoh, a contender for the open U.S. Senate race — was left up to a federal judge, who ruled in the Green Party’s favor on Friday. 

Relatedly, Common Cause has filed a lawsuit to allow party-unaffiliated voters to serve on the state’s Board of Elections. 

PENNSYLVANIA’s Supreme Court last week upheld the constitutionality of the state’s 2019 expansion of mail-in voting to allow anyone to vote by mail. Republican lawmakers supported the expansion until Donald Trump lost in that state in 2020, prompting a change of opinion. 

The Latest In Election Sabotage

Election workers have reported more than 1,000 “hostile or harassing” incidents since the Justice Department announced its Election Threats Task Force last June, including around 11% that “met the threshold for a federal criminal investigation,” the department announced last week.

Lake County, FLORIDA‘s Republican election supervisor, Alan Hays, called out his county Republican Party for claiming in an email that mail-in voting is “one of the BIGGEST sources of election fraud.” “It is completely absurd,” he told The Orlando Sentinel. “I am embarrassed as a Lake County citizen. I am insulted as the supervisor of elections. I am not going to allow anybody — I don’t care Republican, Democrat or anybody else — nobody is going to get away with telling lies about my office and the people who work there and administer elections.”

Indicted Mesa County, COLORADO clerk Tina Peters spent a quarter million dollars for a recount only to confirm that, yes, she lost by double digits in her bid to be the Republican Party’s nominee for secretary of state. Peters will be paid back whatever’s left over after the recount costs are covered.

Matthew DePerno, the MICHIGAN’s GOP pick for attorney general, was intimately involved in efforts to breach election equipment on several occasions in Michigan, in search of digital fodder to back up lies about the 2020 election, state investigatory records indicate. Michigan’s attorney general is seeking a special counsel’s appointment to probe the “conspiracy” to breach voting machines.  

Separately, a right-wing activist group in that state coached poll workers to call 9-1-1 over election-related complaints “if you’re running into a problem with something and not getting anywhere.” Last week’s primary election in that state mostly went off without a hitch, logistically, except for a Republican Party poll challenger who had to be escorted out of the Huntington Place convention center, formerly known as the TCF Center, in Detroit, because he was “harassing and agitating” election workers.

MINNESOTA’s primary elections are on Tuesday. A top GOP candidate for the secretary of state nomination wondered recently whether disabled people, or people who don’t speak English, “should be voting” at all. Also on the ballot: Mike Lindell’s attorney Doug Wardlow, who’s running for the GOP’s attorney general nomination. 

Donald Trump endorsed WISCONSIN Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ little-known primary opponent Adam Steen because Trump is upset Vos won’t back decertifying the 2020 election results in Wisconsin, two years after the fact.

WaPo: Opinion | The Electoral Count Act must be fixed. A new proposal doesn’t go far enough.

NYT: Maps in Four States Were Ruled Illegal Gerrymanders. They’re Being Used Anyway.

NYT: In Wisconsin, G.O.P. Voters Demand the Impossible: Decertifying 2020

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