Ron Watkins (photo, left, complete with cowboy hat), widely believed to be the “Q” behind the QAnon conspiracy-theory movement, announced on Monday, October 18, 2021, that he’s running for an Arizona congressional seat “to fix elections.” Read story here.
He didn’t say which one. It appears he’s buying a condo and setting up a postal box in a district that Democrats always win. However, MSN notes, “Under the U.S. Constitution, Watkins needs only to be an ‘inhabitant’ of Arizona on Election Day next year. There is no minimum period he must live in the state, nor a requirement to live in the district he wants to represent.”
So he could theoretically run in a safe GOP district, but getting the party’s nod could be difficult, as the seat probably is already occupied by a Republican who doesn’t intend to give it up. He’s far more likely to get nominated in a Democratic district where the local GOP can’t recruit a serious contender and are looking for a throwaway candidate as a ballot filler.
It’s not clear how he plans to fix elections. Promoting lies and false conspiracy theories didn’t work, neither did pressuring and threatening election officials, nor did inciting the Capitol mob, or the Arizona GOP’s badly-managed fake “audit” of Maricopa County ballots which confirmed Biden’s win, so presumably he’ll try some other way of fixing elections.
As Einstein said, trying the same thing over and over, and expecting different results, is insanity. The GOP keeps trying the same things, and keeps getting the same results. Maybe he’ll figure out a way to get ahead of the curve. Perhaps a more direct strategy, and one more directly under his control, such as hacking voting machine software. Or just abolishing elections altogether.