On January 6, 2021, an Arizona state representative, Republican Mark Finchem, participated in a march in Washington, capital of the United States, against the confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the presidential election. Part of the group stormed Congress, and the episode went down in history as the most serious attack on American democracy in the country’s recent history.
Finchem was not among the invaders of the Capitol nor was he in the crosshairs of Justice, but he showed support for the mob on several occasions. When the attack was a year old, he wrote on Twitter that “the real rebellion” took place when Democrats “rigged the Arizona election with tens of thousands of stolen votes”. Biden won the state by just over 10,000 votes, 0.3% of the total.
Now, the 2020 result denier is the frontrunner in the race for Arizona’s secretary of state — a post responsible, among other tasks, for organizing the presidential elections locally. Finchem runs in the midterms, as the midterm elections are called, on November 8.
The election will renew the House, a third of the Senate and a range of state offices across the country, including some governors, local legislatures, secretaries of state and attorneys general; in the US, the last two posts are chosen, regionally in some states, through direct voting.
Like Finchem, dozens of Republicans who say they believe the baseless theory that Biden’s victory was stolen are running for office that organizes elections, which could impact the next presidential race. In Nevada, Republican Jim Marchant, also a favorite for secretary of state, said that had he been in office in 2020, he would not have confirmed the current president’s local victory.
That year, he lost the election for deputy and went to court alleging fraud and asking for a new vote – he was defeated again. Finchem and Marchant have the candidacy backed by Trump this year.
A survey by the Associated Press agency found that one in three Republican candidates for positions that monitor and organize elections share what has become known as the “Big Lie”, the idea that Biden lost the election. There was never any evidence of fraud in the election. Considering all the positions for which party names are running, including the House and Senate, the proportion of those who raised suspicions about 2020 jumps to 53%, according to an analysis by The Washington Post newspaper.
“If we count every legal vote, the [ex-]President Trump won the election,” wrote Diego Morales, now a candidate for Secretary of State in Indiana, last year. Doug Mastriano, a Republican candidate for the governorship of Pennsylvania, was also on January 6. There, the governor appoints the secretary. In a swing state like Pennsylvania —where the population has no clear affinity with Democrats or Republicans, and may vary depending on the election—interference can cost a president a victory, analysts say.
“It’s something that’s on the radar and worries election officials and those who study election administration,” says Lisa Bryant, a professor of political science at California State University Fresno. The risk is that these deniers “feel empowered to try to influence the outcome.”
She says, however, that her optimistic side hopes that if these candidates take office, they will see on a daily basis “that they believed in a myth based on misinformation”.
Such influence on the 2024 result is only likely to occur because the American electoral system is very different from the Brazilian one. There is no federal authority in the US that defines the rules of the election, such as the TSE.
The role of the Federal Elections Commission ends up being restricted to the inspection of campaign accounts, with the voting scheme defined by the states — and which can vary drastically from one place to another.
Furthermore, the American claim is, in practice, indirect; Hillary Clinton, for example, beat Trump in the popular vote, but was not elected in 2016, as the US system is based on the Electoral College system, proportional to the population of each state. Thus, whoever gets at least 270 of the 538 votes of the delegates representing the colleges wins — in theory, they must vote in line with the popular election.
If the US no longer has the express segregation laws that suppressed the suffrage of black people, activists for access to vote denounce subtle ways in which it is possible to discourage certain groups from voting, which is not mandatory there. These are the rules that local secretaries of state can interfere with.
One of the ways is to reduce the number of polls in minority neighborhoods, to cause queues and discourage voting – as happened in Cincinnati, Ohio. In Alabama, in 2015, authorities closed DMV offices in black-majority regions, making it difficult to issue a driver’s license, the main document used at the time of voting.
It is also possible to impose difficulties on early voting, adopted in most states because elections in the US are always held on a Tuesday, a business day — there are already votes taking place in almost half of them. In this case, the disincentive tactic takes place through mechanisms that make the practice more bureaucratic, such as the requirement for proof that it will not be possible to appear at the polling station on the scheduled day.
The presence of deniers of the 2020 election in midterms worries observers also in roles such as volunteer polling station, according to Bryant of California State University in Fresno.
“There is nothing to stop these people from working in the election. If they harass voters, for example, they can be arrested, but there is nothing to stop them from returning to the post the next time.”
What’s at stake in midterms
435 seats in the House of Representatives, today with a Democratic majority of 8 votes
35 out of the 100 seats in the Senate, currently divided into 50 congressmen for each party, plus the vote of the Democrat minerva
36 state governments, 20 of which are now held by Republicans
30 state attorney general jobs
27 state secretary of state jobs
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
