Hundreds of Election Deniers Are on the Ballot in Seven Swing States

In February of 2023, the Cochise County, Arizona Board of Supervisors voted 2-1 to transfer the board’s election oversight to David Stevens, the county recorder. Stevens previously said he didn’t trust the county’s election procedures and proposed to count 50,000 midterm ballots by hand, in violation of Arizona law.

In Michigan, Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf launched an investigation in 2020 over false allegations that vote counting machines illegally flipped votes from former President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden. 

And in Wisconsin, District 2 State Assembly member Shae Shortwell made a number of social media posts calling into question the validity of the 2020 election. He even signed a letter to former Vice President Mike Pence, along with a handful of other state Republicans, calling on him to halt the certification of the 2020 election.  

Stevens, Leaf and Shortwell all hold elected positions of power with the potential to impact elections in their respective states. And they represent a fraction of the hundreds of Republicans who are on the ballot for state and local elections in seven crucial swing states this year, according to an investigation by Democracy Docket and Public Wise.

In all, our investigation identified at least 230 election-denying public officials who are running for reelection in state and local races in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in November. All of these people currently hold public office and have publicly taken actions and positions that denied or attempted to overturn the results of an election, or undermined the results of an election. 

The people identified in this investigation were all elected to serve in their state or local government — from elections commissioners and municipal clerks to board of commissioners members and state lawmakers — and are running for reelection. In their positions of power, they could potentially impact future elections by taking actions to overturn, or undermine, election results. 

This data is culled from Public Wise’s Election Threat Index, which tracks the impact of election deniers serving in state and local offices that work on election administration. “We created the Election Threat Index because it became really clear that most voters don’t have access to even the basic information of who controls their elections and who has jurisdiction over their elections,” said Christina Baal-Owens, executive director of Public Wise. 

And the data presented in this investigation is just a  fraction of the number of election deniers on ballots throughout the country this November. Our investigation only includes sitting office-holders running for reelection in the aforementioned seven states — meaning election deniers who are running for the first time weren’t included. Also excluded in this count are those election deniers running in November who previously, but don’t currently, hold office — like former Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem. Finally, our count doesn’t include election deniers on the ballot for seats in U.S. Congress, since that data is already available.

“January 6 was not one day. It’s been a long and very organized movement, and the next part of this movement is getting people who believe in election denialism and that agenda into local offices,” Baal-Owens said. “This is a movement that could continue to grow in the shadows. It could keep slipping into these unopposed or really low turnout races, and then [these people] have an incredible amount of power over elections and then other parts of life.”

Arizona

Over the past two election cycles, Arizona developed into a hotbed for election denialism and conspiracy theories. While local right-wing lawmakers and perennial candidates like Finchem, Kari Lake and Abraham Hamadeh frequently draw national headlines for their loud support of controversial conspiracy theories and refusal to accept the results of their races, there’s a long list of elected officials in the Grand Canyon State who hold similar views.

In all, Democracy Docket identified 33 election deniers on the ballot in Arizona in November. This includes people like Stevens — the Cochise County Recorder — along with Steve Christy, a member of the Pima County Board of Supervisors who voted against certifying the county’s election results in 2020 and voted “no” on the election canvass in 2022, both times echoing election conspiracies and misinformation. 

Florida

There are 12 state lawmakers with a history of election denialism on the ballot in Florida. One of whom is Rep. Philip Wayne Griffits, Jr., who when asked about the 2020 election during a candidate debate said that, “if anything we saw on the news is relatively true then there was absolutely fraud committed around the country.” 

There’s also state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, who previously posted a meme on Facebook alleging that Biden cheated in the 2020 election. In a 2021 interview with Newsmax, Ingoglia repeated conspiracy theories about ballot boxes funded by third parties that helped democratic districts in the state. 

Georgia 

Sen. Brandon Beach, one of the 42 election-denying state lawmakers on the ballot in the Peach State this year, signed on to a letter in 2020 urging Pence to stop the certification of the election. Beach also played a key role in the state’s fake electors scheme, facilitating communication between the Trump campaign and the false electors. 

Like Beach, state Rep. Emory West Dunahoo Jr. also signed on to the Pence Letter. He also posted a number of false allegations and conspiracies related to elections and voting rights on Facebook. 

Michigan

One of the most crucial positions in each Michigan town is that of township clerk who, among other duties, oversees all aspects of election administration for their jurisdiction. Democracy Docket’s investigation identified 14 election deniers running for township clerk in November, including Shelby Charter Township Clerk Stanley Grot, who was one of several fake electors charged with felonies for their scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

In addition to Grot, there’s Candy DeHaan, the Jamestown Township Clerk who’s also running for reelection. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, DeHaan took to Facebook to encourage people to sign up to conduct ballot recounts and posted a letter to the state board of canvassers urging them not to certify the election results. 

North Carolina 

There’s 14 state lawmakers up for reelection in North Carolina with a deep history of election denialism. One of the most prominent is Tim Moore, the Republican speaker of the state House of Representatives. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Moore traveled to Pennsylvania to attend a “ballot count oversight and elections integrity effort.” 

Pennsylvania

In the 2020 election, Pennsylvania was one of a handful of states at the center of the Big Lie — the conspiracies spread by Trump and his sycophants falsely alleging that mass election fraud led to his defeat. Since then, more election deniers have been elected to state and local positions. According to a recent report from States United Action, 34% of the state’s 253-person body — 86 elected lawmakers in total — have been identified as election deniers. 

A number of those state lawmakers are up for reelection in November, including Republicans Sen. Scott Martin, who represents Pennsylvania’s 13th district, and Rep. Bradley Roae, who represents the state’s 6th district. Both lawmakers cast doubts on, and made false claims about, the 2020 election. They both signed a letter to then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) calling for an independent review of the election. 

Our investigation identified 71 election deniers on the ballot in Pennsylvania in November.

Wisconsin 

There’s a number of state legislators up for reelection in Wisconsin this year — including at least 16 state senators and assembly members with a history of election denialism. Among them is Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Vos cast doubt on the validity of Wisconsin results — going so far as hiring former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to independently probe the election results. The effort cost Wisconsin taxpayers more than $1 million and produced no evidence of election fraud. 

Among the scores of other election-denying state lawmakers on the ballot in November is Scott Allen, an assembly member who publicly questioned the 2020 election results, and state Sen. Patrick Testin, who posted on Facebook in 2021 that there was “irrefutable evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.”

Crystal Hill and Courtney Cohn contributed to this report.