The Case of Mark Finchem, the U.S. Secretary of State for Elections, Matte Damned by Oath Keepers and the Associated Press
Millions of dollars have been spent this year in secretary of state contests as several GOP nominees doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 election and are running for it.
Voters in 27 states will pick the secretaries of state in the upcoming election. Republicans hold 14 seats and Democrats hold 13 seats.
While the presence of election deniers on general election ballots in important battlegrounds has caused alarm among voting rights advocates, they are more worried about the role these office will play in affirming the outcome of future elections, including a possible reprise between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Finchem was part of a coalition of GOP secretary of state candidates across the country who all ran on the false premise that the current election system was corrupt. Finchem, who had the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, had called for an overhaul of Arizona voting that would limit access.
Georgia features one of the country’s best known election chiefs, a Republican named Brad Raffensperger, who refused to help Trump overturn his loss in the state. (That campaign by Trump and his allies is the subject of a special grand jury investigation in Fulton County, Georgia.)
Michigan: The race pits the incumbent, Democrat Jocelyn Benson – a leading national voice countering election denial – against Republican Kristina Karamo, who has made false claims about the 2020 election and who was behind the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
Karamo, a community college professor who secured an endorsement from Trump last year, has said he won the election, and she signed on to an unsuccessful Supreme Court lawsuit that challenged Biden’s victory in four states.
Democrat Adrian Fontes, who previously ran elections for Arizona’s largest county, has been narrowly elected to oversee voting in the entire state as secretary of state, according to a race call by The Associated Press.
Fontes defeated the right-wing Republican Mark Finchem, who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with ties to the extremists Oath Keepers.
Leading up to the election, Democrats, current and former election officials, and democracy experts made it clear that victory by Finchem could be a terrible blow to the state.
Barack Obama warned before the election that democracy may not survive in Arizona.
Comments on Election Denialists and the Sharpegate Cosmic Gate “Following the Gloves” by Vincenzo Finchem
The race call, which came late Friday, makes Finchem the latest election denier to be defeated this cycle in a secretary of state race in a competitive state, following losses by Republican candidates in Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico.
As counting proceeded on Election Day, he criticized the state’s election administration and suggested that there was a conspiracy involving Fontes.
After voting ceased in 2020 and Fontes left the recorder’s post, one of the most famous vote-counting conspiracies, dubbed “SharpieGate,” came to light.
“We’re going to take off the gloves,” Fontes said. I’m not shy to call out election denialists for their lies. And I’m also not afraid to let folks know that there are no two sides in this conflict. One side has one other side. There’s the American side. The other side is not true.