Just two months before the mid-term elections, attention is focusing on races that usually go unnoticed. Campaigns for secretaries of state are usually low-profile contests, featuring little-known candidates.
That changed in 2020 when the job of counting ballots and certifying elections became a key part of the alleged election fraud in the Presidential election. Secretaries of state—charged with certifying election results—found themselves in the spotlight.
In eleven states, including some key election battlegrounds, the Republican candidate has openly expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. They have been dubbed “election deniers” by mainstream media and left-leaning groups. States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit founded in 2020, called these candidates “a threat to our democracy.”
States United is most concerned about the elections taking place in states where Trump disputed the 2020 election counts: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Michigan.
Alabama: Wes Allen
State Rep. Wes Allen endorsed the state of Texas’ legal challenge to the 2020 election results. Among his campaign promises: withdrawing Alabama from The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a non-profit organization that aims to help states manage lists of eligible voters.“There is no justification for any state’s involvement in ERIC,” Allen told a local TV station in an interview. “The minute I become Secretary of State, Alabama will be out of it for good.”
Arizona: Mark Finchem
Arizona state representative Mark Finchem has spoken out for years about corruption in American politics, and has repeatedly stated that Trump won the 2020 election. Finchem was present at the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and led efforts in Arizona to challenge the results of the 2020 election.If elected, Finchem promises to ban early voting and drastically restrict the use of mail-in ballots. He is also attempting to suspend the use of all electronic vote-counting machines in Arizona.
Connecticut: Dominic Rapini
Dominic Rapini is the former chair of Fight Voter Fraud, Inc., an organization alleging widespread fraud in the 2020 Presidential election. He left that position in August 2021, and since then has been reluctant to directly address the issue with reporters.Indiana: Diego Morales
Republican candidate Diego Morales has spoken forcefully about what he calls “the scam perpetrated against all Americans” in 2020. Morales served as an aide to Mike Pence when Pence was governor of Indiana.He detailed three components to the alleged fraud in the 2020 election: the wide use of mail-in voting without proper safeguards; the increased scrutiny of in-person voters as compared to mail-in votes; and the censorship of the mainstream press.
“The blatant censorship and intervention of Big Tech,” wrote Morales, led to the suppression of “the most blockbuster story of that election season, the NY Post revelations about the Hunter Biden laptop and its proof of the Joe Biden’s leadership of a family criminal cartel … that sold out America to the most corrupt regimes in the world, from Russia to China.”
Massachusetts: Rayla Campbell
Rayla Campbell is a radio host who has repeatedly used her platform to declare that Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election. “Our great president [Trump] is THE President elected for the next four years. We know it. They’re trying to steal an election because they can’t win or do anything right,” she said on her show immediately after election day.“They did it with the cheating of the counting of the ballots,” she said on her show. “And they will always do stuff like that because they can’t win legally, and that’s why we’ve got to fight a lot harder. A lot harder, and a little dirty. Because they fight extremely dirty. It’s time to beat ‘em at their own game, and we can do that.”
Michigan: Kristina Karamo
Kristina Karamo first gained attention in 2020, when she claimed to have witnessed corruption in the processing of mail-in ballots in Detroit.Minnesota: Kim Crockett
Kim Crockett is a lawyer has said this about the 2020 election: “I don’t think the word ‘lawless’ is too strong.”“The corporate media narrative is that 2020 was the most secure election in the history of voting,” wrote Crockett in an endorsement of the book “Rigged” by Mollie Hemingway. “This is propaganda designed to stop the conversation,” wrote Crockett. “And they viciously attack anyone who dares to question that conclusion, calling us names like ‘election deniers’ instead of engaging us on election policy.”
Nevada: Jim Marchant
Jim Marchant is perhaps the most forceful critic of American democracy currently running for public office. Beyond claims of election fraud in 2020, he has stated that all elections in America are controlled by hidden powers.New Mexico: Audrey Trujillo
Audrey Trujillo has called the 2020 election “a huge, huge, I would say coup, to unseat a president.” On her campaign Facebook page, she wrote, “Trump’s election was stolen.”Vermont: H. Brooke Paige
Brooke Paige is a conservative activist who has expressed support for the Jan. 6 protest at the U.S. Capitol, and has consistently alleged that the 2020 election was “stolen”. In posts to his Facebook campaign page, he has claimed the fraud happened by “stuffing the ballot box and corrupting the tabulation of the election results.”In an interview with CNN in August, Paige acknowledged that Biden won in Vermont in 2020, but said the question of whether Biden legitimately won the presidency is “such a complex question,” hinging on how someone defines “legitimately,” that he could not offer a direct answer.
Wyoming: Chuck Gray
Following the 2020 election, Republican Wyoming state Rep. Chuck Gray pushed Wyoming’s governor to support the Texas-led lawsuit to overturn election results in four states. He has repeatedly called 2020 “the fraudulent election” in interviews and speeches.In a June interview with Cowboy State Daily, he endorsed the film “2000 Mules” and its claims of widespread voter fraud. He stated his belief that “the left has stolen elections with ballot drop boxes.”