Latest primaries include deniers for state election posts OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
Republican primary voters in Arizona and Kansas will decide Tuesday whether to elevate loyalists to former President Donald Trump who support his false claims that he lost the 2020 election and send them to the general election.
The GOP primaries for secretary of state are the last this year with candidates questioning the security of the election in their state, despite the lack of evidence of problems widespread enough to alter the results. Republican voters elsewhere are divided on sending those candidates to the November vote.
A secretary of state in Washington state includes several Republican and unaffiliated candidates, including one who has made allegations of voter fraud without evidence. Washington state has a primary system in which the two largest voters win the general election, regardless of party membership.
Democratic candidates in all three states reject the premise of a stolen 2020 presidential election and warn that victories in November by those promoting conspiracies would jeopardize free and fair elections. In all three states, the Secretary of State is the highest-ranking election official.
In Arizona, a key battleground for the president and the US Senate, two out of four GOP candidates are claiming the election was stolen from Trump and are planning major changes if they win the November primaries and general election. to win.
They include State Representative Mark Finchem, who attended Trump’s January 6, 2021 meeting that led to the attack on the US Capitol. He tried this year to get the Republican-controlled legislature to inform Congress that Arizona wanted to deny Biden’s election victory.
The other Republican to back Trump’s claims is also a member of the Arizona House. Rep. Shawnna Bolick introduced a bill last year that would allow a simple majority of the legislature to nullify the results of the presidential election. Republicans control the Arizona legislature.
Two other Republican candidates are on the ballot in Arizona: state senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita, who recognizes President Joe Biden’s victory but has spent a decade working to tighten election laws, and businessman Beau Lane, who is backed by GOP-backers. Governor Doug Ducey.
Finchem is backed by Trump and said in a recent interview that concerns about the effect of his potential victory on free and fair elections are unfounded. He said he will just enforce the laws as written.
“I think it’s interesting that there are people, especially Democrats who are saying, ‘Oh, he’s going to screw up the system. He’s going to do this, he’s a threat to democracy,’ Finchem said. Yet he claims that tens of thousands of counterfeit ballots led to Biden’s victory, a claim for which there is no credible evidence.
Two Democrats, Reginald Bolding, leader of the minority group in the House and former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, are seeking their party’s nomination.
In Kansas, voters will choose between a GOP challenger who questions the 2020 presidential results and the incumbent Republican who believes the election was safe in his state.
Secretary of State Scott Schwab has defended the use of ballot boxes, which Trump and other Republicans say are prone to abuse, although both Republican and Democratic secretaries of state across the country reported no significant problems with them. He has rejected baseless theories of fraud, at least in the Kansas election.
Schwab is up against Mike Brown, a former county commissioner in suburban Kansas City, who has put doubts about the security of the state election at the heart of his campaign. He has pledged to ban ballot boxes and said he will use the secretary of state’s office to prosecute electoral fraud cases, rather than Schwab’s approach to working through prosecutors.
Kansas Democrat Jenna Repass is unopposed in her party’s primaries.
In the top two of the Washington state primary is incumbent Democratic Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. He was appointed by Governor Jay Inslee last November and hopes to hold his seat for the remaining two years of former Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman’s four-year term.
Hobbs faces several Republican and unaffiliated challengers, including Tamborine Borrelli, an “America First” candidate who was fined by the state Supreme Court earlier this summer for making baseless claims about widespread voter fraud.
Hobbs and Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson, who acts as impartial and said she is the most experienced in conducting elections, raised the most money. Republicans in the race include former state senator Mark Miloscia and current senator Keith Wagoner.
Under Washington’s primary system, the top two voters advance to the November general election, regardless of party. It will probably take days for the results to add up as it is a postal election.
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Associated Press writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and Rachel La Corte in Olympia, Washington, contributed to this report.