Bolts.com has done some deep research into the elections official positions in states where they themselves are on the ballot this year. Yikes:
One needs only to skim recent headlines to be reminded of the power of state elections officials to shape access to voting. Nebraska’s secretary of state just unilaterally shut down voter registration for tens of thousands of people with past felony convictions just weeks before the election. The secretary of state in Ohio, who has spent years courting the Big Lie, this month proposed to make it harder to vote by mail by limiting drop boxes. In Arizona, the secretary of state is laying the groundwork to combat election deniers who might seek to reject election results in November.
All these officials were elected by voters in the 2022 midterms, a busy cycle that saw a coordinated (and largely unsuccessful) effort by followers of Donald Trump to take over election administration. Two years later, a new round of states are selecting their chief election officials.
Twelve states are deciding in November who will run their elections going forward.
That role is directly on the ballot in seven states; in five others, voters will elect a governor or lawmakers who’ll then get to appoint their elections chief.
In most of these states, this elections chief is the secretary of state; but in a few, there is another office that has that authority—for instance, in Utah, it’s the lieutenant governor.
Today Bolts is publishing a new guide that walks you through these elections in all 12 states.
In some of these states, including Missouri, Oregon, and Vermont, a candidate is once again running who has clearly embraced false conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. They’ve proposed taking drastic actions such as ending mail-in voting.
In other states, such as New Hampshire or Utah, the office is unlikely to fall into the hands of an election denier. But even these races can be critical to the shape of democracy. Secretaries of state or the equivalent official often design voter outreach programs, or set policies that can make voter registration easy or difficult. They can also champion new election legislation or maneuver to stall ballot initiatives.
In the bad old days, many of these (when America was Great) these jobs were often partisan. But it’s having a big resurgence with the new Republicans election stealing strategy. Keep your eyes on this. Some of those states may not be swing states now but …