This is what will happens when all these conspiracy theorists take over the election machinery
Otero County is once again facing an election scandal as the Republican-controlled county commission is threatening to throw out over 7,000 votes by refusing to certify the results of the June 7 primary.
“Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver on Tuesday asked the state Supreme Court to order the three-member Otero County commission to certify June 7 primary election results to ensure voters are not disenfranchised and that political candidates have access to the general election ballot in November,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday. “On Monday, the commission in its role as a county canvassing board voted unanimously against certifying the results of the primary without raising specific concerns about discrepancies, over the objection of the county clerk.”
The county counted 7,123 votes in the state’s gubernatorial primaries.
“Members of the Otero County commission include Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin, who ascribes to unsubstantiated claims that Trump won the 2020 election. Griffin was convicted of illegally entering restricted U.S. Capitol grounds — though not the building — amid the riots on Jan. 6, 2021, and is scheduled for sentencing later this month. He acknowledged that the standoff over this primary could delay the outcome of local election races,” the AP reported.
The complaints over the primary stem from GOP conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines.
Trump won over 60% of the vote in Otero County in 2020, but Griffin conducted a door-to-door “audit” anyway.
“The post-election canvassing process is a key component of how we maintain our high levels of election integrity in New Mexico and the Otero County Commission is flaunting that process by appeasing unfounded conspiracy theories and potentially nullifying the votes of every Otero County voter who participated in the primary,” the secretary of state explained.
The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit in March seeking to have Griffin removed from office.
Griffin was at the Capitol on January 6 and he was convicted on one misdemeanor count. But sure, this guy should be in charge of vote certification.
This wonderful fellow:
The founder of the Cowboys for Trump political support group in a live Facebook video urged people who support performances of the Black national anthem at football games to “go back to Africa” and condemned as “vile scum” people who portray the Confederate flag as racist.
There are a lot more where he came from:
Jim Marchant, one of the organizers of a Trump-inspired “America First” slate of candidates who continue to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election, easily won the Republican nomination for secretary of state in Nevada, a key political battleground.
His victory was called by The Associated Press.
Mr. Marchant, who was also a member of Nevada’s alternate slate of pro-Trump electors seeking to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the state in 2020, has said he would have refused to certify that year’s election had he been in office.
In his push to become Nevada’s top election official, he has proposed decertifying Dominion voting machines and pushing for the hand counting of paper ballots, which experts say would bring lengthy delays and chaos to the voting process.
In the general election, he will face Cisco Aguilar, a Democratic lawyer who once worked for former Senator Harry Reid, in what will be a closely watched race that could hinge on the outcome of Senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s re-election bid. Down-ballot races for offices like secretary of state have often — though not always — closely mirrored results for top-of-the-ticket elections.
A former state assemblyman, Mr. Marchant unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2020. But rather than concede a race he lost by more than 16,000 votes, or about 5 percentage points, he blamed fraud for his loss, filing a lawsuit that echoed many debunked claims about the 2020 election that Republicans put forward elsewhere.
A red wave will sweep people like this into office. And then Donald Trump will be president again. Don’t think it can’t happen.