|  Nov.  10, 2022, 2:11 pm

County clerk candidates who disputed or outright denied the results of the 2020 presidential election fared poorly in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Of the four counties — Salt Lake, Summit, Utah and Washington — with incumbents who have supported conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, only one looks set to win the election. Republican candidate Aaron Davidson easily won his race to become Utah County’s new clerk, according to early returns Wednesday. His main opponent in the race was American Independent candidate Jake Oakes. Davidson leads the race with 80 percent of the vote, while Oaks has 13 percent, according to early returns. Earlier this year, Davidson spoke as part of a panel before a screening of the movie “2000 Mules,” a movie that claims without evidence that the polls were filled with fake ballots, and on his campaign website, Davidson says that they are anti-mail ballots, claiming, without evidence, that the county’s ballots are flawed. Davidson also came under scrutiny earlier this year when he suggested Utah County not spend money on monkeypox vaccines because the vaccines would benefit gay men. In Salt Lake County, Democrat Lannie Chapman has a comfortable lead over GOP candidate Goud Maragani, though early returns Wednesday did not show a clear winner. An investigation by The Salt Lake Tribune found that Marangani repeatedly said in social media posts that Democrats stole the 2020 election by cheating. Other publications report that Marangani described the Democrats as “Marxists” and “Komites.” As Tuesday’s election loomed, Marangani then claimed: “At one time, I thought the 2020 election was stolen.” In Summit and Washington counties, the office races were won by incumbents – Democrat Eve Furse in Summit and Republican Susan Lewis in Washington. Both received more than 90% of the employee vote in each of their elections, according to early returns, and both faced challengers who disputed the results of the 2020 election. This will be further updated as more ballots are counted and reported. Editor’s note • This story is available only to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers. Thank you for supporting local journalism.