Comment Voters in the six major battleground states where Donald Trump sought to overturn his 2020 defeat rejected candidates who refused to go to the polls trying to control their states’ election systems this year, a resounding signal that Americans are tired of his baseless claims. former president for widespread fraud. Candidates for secretary of state in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada who had repeated Trump’s false accusations lost their contests on Tuesday. with the final match called Saturday night. A fourth candidate never made it out of the May primary in Georgia. In Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s most prominent election naysayers lost his bid for governor, a position that would have given him the power to appoint the secretary of state. And in Wisconsin, the defeat of an election-denying candidate in the governor’s race effectively blocked a move to bring the election administration under party control. Republicans allied with Trump have made a concerted push this year to win a number of state and federal offices, including the once-obscure office of secretary of state, which in many cases is a state’s top election official. Some vowed to “de-certify” the 2020 results, although election law experts said that was not possible. Others have promised to decommission electronic voting machines, require hand-counting of ballots or ban all mail-in voting. Their platforms were rooted in Trump’s debunked claims that the 2020 race was rigged, and their bids for public office raised serious concerns about whether the popular will could be overturned and undermine free and fair elections in 2024 and post. Election administrators and voting rights advocates said the rebuke of suffragettes seeking state-level office was a refreshing course correction by U.S. voters, whose choice of more experienced and less extreme candidates reflected a desire for stability and the belief that the nation’s elections are actually largely secure. “This was a vote for normalcy,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who prevailed against a Democratic challenger Tuesday after defeating U.S. Rep. Jodi Heiss in the spring primary. Hice, who was endorsed by Trump, spent the campaign attacking Raffensperger for refusing to block Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia. Voters were “looking for and rewarding character,” Raffensperger said. “They were looking for people who could do the job. They rewarded ability.” Elsewhere, losers included Doug Mastriano for governor in Pennsylvania, as well as three candidates for secretary of state — Arizona’s Mark Finchem, Nevada’s Jim Marchant and Michigan’s Kristina Karamo — all of whom tried to overturn the 2020 result .The loss of gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels in Wisconsin would have the power to advance a Republican plan to eliminate the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission and transfer election administration to the secretary of state or another party office. Of the five defeated in the general election, only Michels, who lost to Gov. Tony Evers (D), had conceded as of Saturday afternoon. But most of the others have not, so far, claimed that the fraud had tainted their race. Their muted reaction to Tuesday’s results suggests an attack on the integrity of American elections it’s not a winning formula, at least for public office, voting rights advocates said. “Republicans are tired,” said Democrat Cisco Aguilar, who was projected late Saturday to have defeated Marchant in Nevada. “They see that it is not a winning road. I think they are listening to the voters.” Track which election naysayers are winning and losing in the midterms As workers in Clark County, Nev., tried to count a batch of ballots that were left, Chief Elections Officer Joe Gloria told reporters Saturday that no candidate denied an election had filed a complaint. Hours later, after officials released the new vote totals, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) was expected to win re-election, beating Adam Laxalt (R), the state’s former attorney general, and giving Democrats an expected majority in the next Senate. . Laxalt tweeted earlier Saturday that it looked like the new batch of votes could block his path to victory. “If it’s GOP districts or slightly DEM-leaning, then we can still win,” Laxalt tweeted, in language that signaled a willingness to accept the results even if his opponent won. “If they continue to trend towards heavy DEMs, then it will overtake us.” It was a dramatic contrast to Laxalt’s rhetoric in 2020, when he helped Trump try to overturn Biden’s victory in Nevada, in part by falsely claiming that large batches of Democratic mail-in ballots were illegally discarded in the count after Election Day. “It’s good for our country when election losers accept defeat,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. “American democracy is built on this. It’s also good at this point that they’re not blatantly denying the result.” While many candidates who were in denial about the outcome of the 2020 vote were unsuccessful in their bids for state office, the US House was a different matter. At least 150 abstentions were expected to win their House races as of Saturday — an increase from the 139 Republicans who voted against the electoral college count after the attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on January 6, 2021. In all, more than 170 abstentions on the ballot for the U.S. House, Senate and key state offices are expected to win elections starting Saturday, according to a Washington Post analysis. The Post identified candidates as election deniers if they challenged Biden’s victory, objected to the counting of Biden’s electoral college votes, expressed support for a partisan review of post-election ballots, signed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 result, or attended or expressed support for the rally on the day of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. “Electoral denial doesn’t go away overnight,” Griswold said. “The attacks on voting rights and the attacks on American democracy will not stop.” But many voters said in interviews that the defeat of such candidates was a driving force behind their votes Tuesday. Andrew Haber, a 53-year-old child psychologist in Arizona, did not vote in the primary, but voted Democratic after being alarmed by conspiracy theories floated by Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and her running mate. conservatives. “When you abandon the process, then how do you steer the ship back in a democratic way?” Haber, a Democrat, said at a polling station in Paradise Valley, outside Phoenix. “I still hope we can right the ship, but it would be really hard to do that when we have more people holding the levers of power who don’t believe in democracy.” Matt Crosky, a 43-year-old who has voted for both parties, said he was disturbed by the “voter intimidation” efforts he saw Republicans embrace, including armed observers at polls in nearby Mesa. He saw his Democratic votes in his north Phoenix neighborhood as an insurance policy for Democratic rules. “I just feel like after all the ‘Stop stealing,’ it’s a lot of ‘I didn’t lose, you stole,’” Crosky said. “At the end of a sports game, we know who the winners and losers are, who scored the most points, who got the most votes. I hope things stay where they are so that at least our votes count.” Finchem’s Democratic opponent, Adrian Fontes, had won more votes from Saturday afternoon than any other candidate on the Arizona ballot — even those in hotly contested U.S. Senate and governor races. In an interview, Fondes said he had assembled a broad coalition that included moderate Republicans and independents. But he also admitted that his success was about what he wasn’t. “I’m not an insurgent,” he said, contrasting his public image with that of Finchem, who is a member of the extremist group Oath Keepers and was photographed outside the US Capitol during the January 6 attack. “I think a lot of politically minded Republicans really didn’t like what Mark Finchem stands for and who he is,” Fontes said. Finchem refused to admit it and criticized “fake news” for calling his election for Fondes while officials are still counting ballots. “You don’t quit a marathon at mile 15,” he tweeted on Saturday. “Same with elections — they’re not over until the last legal vote is counted.” Griswold and others said several factors fueled what she described as a victory for democracy. First was the quality of the candidates who refused the election, who embraced extremist views which most voters recognized and were motivated to reject. An additional factor was the fact that many Republicans — including Trump — discouraged voters from voting by mail, a dubious strategy that may have dampened GOP turnout. Finchem went so far as to urge voters to come in only at the end of the day Tuesday and cast their ballots provisionally — a complicated directive that left some GOP strategists baffled and worried. Democrats have also been aggressive in framing their opponents as election deniers and spending money to highlight the issue. Aguilar spent $1 million to air an ad called “Dangerous,” which featured various statements by Marchant about denying the election — and suggesting the Republican would be willing to rig elections in the future. “If we get elected, their power is over,” Marchant appears to say in the ad. Marchant is a founder of the Coalition for America’s First Secretary of State, a group of pro-Trump candidates who are denying the election, including Finchem, Karamo and Mastriano. The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and affiliated groups spent record amounts — more than $24 million — in races in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada, said Griswold, who leads policy…
