“Swing state by swing state, former President Donald Trump is trying to get people who tried to overturn the 2020 election chosen to be in charge of the 2024 election,” CNN says (read story here).
“Trump’s … endorsement of state Rep. Mark Finchem for Arizona secretary of state is the latest in a series of announcements that has alarmed independent elections experts,” CNN said. “Trump has now backed Republicans who supported his lies about the 2020 election for the job of top elections official in three crucial battlegrounds — Arizona, Michigan and Georgia — where the current elections chiefs opposed his efforts to reverse his 2020 defeat.”
This is no more legitimate than Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election or his spurious election lies. Elections should be run by impartial professionals, and where overseen by elected officials, the latter should be people of integrity who won’t meddle, interfere, or try to exert partisan influence over voting or results.
In Washington state, elections are overseen by Kim Wyman (bio here), the secretary of state, the only Republican elected to a statewide office in our state. She has both university training and experience in election administration; she’s a certified elections administrator, and was a county auditor (the official in charge on elections on the county level) before her current post. She hasn’t endorsed Trump’s election lies, or been a party to the kind of fake “audits” pushed by Republicans in Arizona, Wisconsin, and other states, whose purpose is not quality control but to further undermine the GOP voter base’s confidence in elections and, ultimately, our democracy. That makes her acceptable to Democrats.
What’s not acceptable is what Trump is attempting: To get party loyalists elected to key election oversight positions, so Republicans can tamper with election results. People who have no respect for our democratic institutions, free and fair elections, or an impartial election process should not be allowed to run our elections. That, not fictitious voting fraud, is the real threat to our democracy. Voters should consider endorsing or repeating Trump’s election lies to be disqualifying for positions with election oversight responsibilities.