The 2020 Midterm Secretary of State in Michigan: Where do we stand? Where are we going? How many candidates will you choose to run for state office?

As several Republican nominees doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, a number of secretary of state contests have attracted attention and millions of dollars in political spending this year.

In all, voters in 27 states will choose secretaries of state in the midterms. Fourteen seats are held by Republicans and 13 by Democrats.

The midterms have been a success for 2020 deniers. CNN projects that four Republican candidates who rejected, questioned or tried to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory will be elected as state elections chief, all of them in Republican-dominated states. CNN predicts at least 18 such candidates will be elected as governor or senator.

The election conspiracy theories have flourished since Biden won this traditionally red state by less than 11,000 votes two years ago, so republican voters chose state Rep. Mark Finchem as their standard bearer. Finchem, who has described himself as a member of the far-right Oath Keeper’s group, scored Trump’s endorsement back in September 2021. The GOP lawmaker has lobbied to toss out the results of the 2020 election in some of the state’s largest counties – including Maricopa, home to Phoenix, where a widely derided review of ballots ordered by Republicans in the state Senate still concluded that Biden had won more votes than Trump did.

Georgia has a well-known election chief who refused to help Trump get the votes he needed to win the state. (That campaign by Trump and his allies is the subject of a special grand jury investigation in Fulton County, Georgia.)

All eyes in Michigan will be on the state’s gubernatorial race as Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer faces conservative commentator Tudor Dixon, who’s hoping her Trump endorsement will help turn the state back towards Republicans. The right to abortion will also be on the ballot. Democrats hope the issue will help boost turnout among their base voters. Michigan voters have a chance to change the state’s secretary of state by voting on a ballot measure that expands access to the ballot. Republican Kristina Karamo has supported President Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Democrats will need to do well in Detroit-area counties and run up the score in other areas of the state in order to keep Michigan blue. Republicans will likely do well in the western and northern parts of the state and will try to drum up more support in the historically conservative area around Grand Rapids, which has become more Democratic in recent years.

The community college professor who got an endorsement from Trump last year signed on the unsuccessful Supreme Court lawsuit that challenged Biden’s victory in four states.

Nonpartisan analysis of 2016 and 2020 critical races in the U.S. Senators, House Speakers, Senate Speakers and Democrat Gov. Brian Kemp

These states all have multiple critical races that will determine control of the Senate, the House and state governments. What happens in these states will impact issues like abortion rights, economic policy, education and the climate crisis — not just within their borders, but across the country.

The CNN Election Center uses race ratings by Inside Elections to give nonpartisan analysis of campaigns for the Senate, House and governor.

Democrats need at least 50 seats to keep control of the Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris giving them the tie-breaking vote for a majority, while Republicans need 51 to gain control. Republicans are predicted to win 20 seats, while Democrats will get 12 seats on the ballot this year. 3 seats are rated as toss-ups.

Democrats performed well in Pennsylvania. They ran as well as Mr. Biden did in 2020 or even better. They swept every competitive House seat. John Fetterman beat Mr. Biden by a much wider margin than Mr. Biden won the state. Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, won in a landslide.

The last couple of cycles have shown how close Georgia elections can be. Just like Senate control came down to Georgia in 2020, the same could happen in 2022.Last cycle, Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won Senate seats to flip control of the chamber to Democrats. Herschel Walker has maintained GOP support even though he has had a number of scandals. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp survived a Trump-endorsed primary challenger this cycle after rejecting Trump’s election lies in 2020. He won his first term in office in 2018, beating Democrat Stacey Abrams by just 55,000 votes. Kemp, who stood up to Trump, will be the Republican candidate in this year’s election, and the two will face each other again. If she wins, she would be the first black female governor of the United States.

Nevada voted for every presidential winner from 1980 to 2012. When Clinton won the Silver State in 2016, it ended the streak but it resumed by voting for Biden in 2020. Clinton won the state by a larger margin than Biden did. While Democrats have won the state in every presidential election beginning in 2008, their margin has narrowed each time.

Pennsylvania became a Democratic state in 2020. Trump narrowly won the state in 2016, but before that, the state had voted for Democrats in six consecutive presidential elections.

Wisconsin is one of the most closely divided states in the nation, with Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Democrat Tony Evers both looking to win reelection. The race for lieutenant governor is between Johnson and Barnes, who supports the removal of police funding. Evers faces Republican businessman Tim Michels, who won Trump’s support in the primary by aggressively amplifying the former president’s 2020 election lies. Democrats receive the most support from historically blue-collar Milwaukee and the capital of Madison. The GOP base is found in Milwaukee’s more affluent western suburbs and in less populated areas of central Wisconsin.

Republicans won big in New York. Their candidates for Congress did a better job than Mr. Trump did. The state had seven competitive congressional districts. Kathy Hochul, the incumbent, held off her Republican challenger Lee Zeldin to win the governorship in a traditionally blue state.

The abortion and democracy issues were at stake in every state, and there were obvious differences between them. The Republican Party nominated a candidate for Governor in Pennsylvania who was central to efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election. Democrats feared that a Mastriano victory could risk a constitutional crisis and a threat to democratic government. It might have threatened another long-held right as well; Mr. Mastriano is a strident opponent of abortion, and Republicans controlled the state Legislature.

There are exceptions, of course — like Democratic strength in Colorado or Republican durability in Texas. But most of each party’s most impressive showings fit well.

There’s the Republican landslide in Florida, where the stop-the-steal movement never sought to overturn an election result and where Gov. Ron DeSantis refused to go further than a 15-week abortion ban. There are the Democratic successes in Kansas and Michigan, where abortion referendums were on the ballot at different points this year, and where Democrats swept the most competitive House districts.

The votes are still being counted in key races across the country. Election Day becomes Election Weekend and here is what to know about it.

The razor-thin elections for Nevada’s Senate seat and Arizona’s governorship have yet to be called Saturday as counties in both states work to whittle down the tens of thousands of ballots that still need to be counted.

Democrat Katie Hobbs leads Republican Kari Lake by about 31,000 votes in the Arizona governor’s race as of Saturday morning, following the reporting of roughly 80,000 ballots in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous. Republican Adam Laxalt was holding onto a slim lead of 800 votes over his opponent, Democrat Catherine Masto.

According to CNN’s projection on Friday, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly will win against Republican nominee for Arizona, while Republican Joe Lombardo will beat Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak in Nevada.

The RNC and the North Carolina State Board of Elections: Why Voting Equipment is Hard to Use, and Why the Reports Have Been Difficult

Despite a lackluster mid-term performance by the GOP, a few Senate Republicans are calling for a delay in the scheduled leadership elections, while House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is being criticized for his leadership.

The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Arizona criticized the process of tabulation.

The groups threatened legal action and demanded around-the-clock shifts of ballot processing until all of the votes are counted.

Addressing the specific accusations from the RNC statement, Gates said: “I would prefer that if there are concerns that they have, that they communicate those to us here. I am a Republican. Three of my colleagues on the board are Republicans. We should raise these issues with us and discuss them with us, as opposed to making baseless claims.

Before polls closed, election administrators were still getting calls with concerns about voting gear, while poll monitors hounded workers with questions about the machinery. In a few cases, people tried to disrupt voting or prevent voters from casting ballots. And technical glitches in multiple jurisdictions were seized on by Republican candidates, election deniers, right-wing influencers and Mr. Trump. Such misinformation is bound to further damage the confidence of at least some portions of the public.

The incidents reported by officials were smaller than in the past. Republican candidates have largely accepted the results when they have lost, with some of the most vocal conspiracy theorists claiming that the results are fraudulent. Mr. Trump called for a protest. The technical problems in Arizona and Michigan have been largely ignored.

They pointed to more transparency measures, such as live cams at ballot boxes, and more frequent communication by elections officials. Some thought that the polling and right-wing media reports may have discouraged some right-wing activists from causing a commotion at the polls.

“It was remarkably smooth,” said Damon Circosta, the chairman of the North Carolina State Board of Elections. “You can tell by my giddiness I was not expecting that.”

Putting out fires: Calling for help in the fight against the false rumors of election day in Maricopa County, Kan.

Over the past two years, a movement of conspiracy-theory-minded activists has loudly questioned and undermined the country’s electoral system. Their efforts found backing from conservative organizations, deep-pocketed supporters and right-wing media, and they created a concern about the potential for violence on Election Day.

“There are definitely still things for us to be concerned about,” said Orion Danjuma, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, an elections integrity group. Last month he helped the group file successful legal challenges to self-appointed vigilantes who patrolled ballot drop boxes in Maricopa County, at times carrying long guns and wearing body armor.

Such actions were pledged by the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party. “We have been preparing for this for over a year,” she said in a tweet on Thursday. “We have a huge team of lawyers ready to take action if needed.”

“We can choose to curl up on the ledge and succumb, or we can dust ourselves off and restart the arduous climb up the steep slopes” of election integrity, wrote Patrice Johnson, the organizer of Michigan Fair Elections in a blog post. The group was going to have a meeting on Thursday.

The Republican candidates for Michigan governor and attorney general acknowledged defeat on Wednesday, as did Tim Michaels the Republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin, who had promised to change the voting system so that Republicans never lost elections again in the state.

The stability of the election system can only be ensured by concessions by candidates who spread false rumors. In addition, they note public outreach from election officials can help put out fires.

After being bombarded with calls and emails from voters demanding that their votes be counted by hand, Fred Sherman, the election chief in Johnson County, Kan., came up with a solution. There is a chance that voters in the district will be hand counted, if they choose to put their ballot in a specially marked white envelope in a sealed red bag.

Mr. Sherman said they created a bit of turbulence. It’s like running a treadmill on an incline. Mr. Sherman said that an easy run isn’t something that can be had with constant election denial.

Douglas Wilson believes polling that predicted a large Republican wave may have helped to calm the ardor of election deniers. Under that logic, he said, attempts to undermine faith in the results would only have discouraged Republican voters.

The election defenders group organized many sessions to train people at the polls to prevent voter intimidation. Its goal was to recruit 1,250 volunteers, but instead was overwhelmed with more than 2,000 people who completed several hours of online training on how to intervene in tense situations, dispel confusion, de-escalate confrontations with potentially armed activists and, more than anything, keep things calm.

Tiffany Flowers is a lead organizer of the campaign and she said that there was a good problem of more people signing up than there was space to put them. She said she worked on Tuesday to keep an eye on social media and her partners around the country.

A man tried to prevent a woman from entering a voting center just minutes before it was supposed to close. Ms. Flowers said several Election Defenders helped the woman get in and then took her back to her car.

“I strongly believe that there are more Americans who wanted to see everyone who was eligible to vote be able to vote fairly, freely and with dignity,” Ms. Flowers said.

CNN Counts 22 Republicans Who Are Not Running for the 2020 State Senate Majority. The Campaign to Defend Mastriano’s Voting Power

Governor: CNN counted 22 Republican nominees for governor who rejected, questioned, tried to overturn or refused to affirm the 2020 election results. CNN has projected eight of the candidates as victors, and 12 aslosers, including Doug Mastriano, a far right election theorist who would have gained the power to appoint the state’s election chief. Two are in races too early to call, including forceful election denier Kari Lake in Arizona.

Senate: CNN counted 19 Republican nominees for the US Senate who rejected, questioned, tried to overturn or refused to affirm the 2020 results. (Senators have less power over elections than secretaries of state or governors do, but they do get a vote on certifying the Electoral College results in presidential elections and on federal elections legislation.) CNN thought that 10 of the candidates were winners and eight of them were loser. A person is in a race.