Hello, and Happy Thursday,

For some year-end reporting, I’ve been talking with folks about how 2021 exploded as the year American democracy came under siege. “It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” David Becker, an election administration expert and the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told me.

For our last Fight to Vote newsletter of the year (don’t worry – we’ll be back in January), I wanted to highlight the most dangerous threats to America’s electoral system.

Efforts to inject partisanship into under-the-radar election jobs

Each state in the US oversees its own elections. And within each state different counties, and in some places even smaller townships and municipalities, are responsible for running those elections. At each level, there are under-the-radar officials, appointed in some cases and elected in others, who are responsible for enforcing the rules.

These are positions that many people have never heard of – their job isn’t to be political, but rather to ensure that the person with the most votes is seated as the winner of the election. Over the last year, however, there’s been an effort to weaponize these offices.

One of the first signs came a few months ago in Michigan. The Detroit News reported Republican officials there were nominating people who embraced the idea that the 2020 election was stolen to positions on local boards of canvassers, which play a central role in certifying election results.

In Georgia, Republicans have quietly exerted more influence over local election boards across the state, removing Black Democrats from their roles. In addition to certifying election results, those local boards approve polling place locations and consider challenges to voter eligibility.

And in Pennsylvania, there’s concern that election deniers are seeking positions as judges of elections. These officials are essentially in charge of the polling place in their precinct.

Attacks on election officials

Over the last year, there’s been a surge in harassment against election officials, and many of them have left their jobs. Perhaps the most alarming example of this is happening in Wisconsin, where Republicans are launching an aggressive effort to oust Meagan Wolfe, the non-partisan administrator of the bipartisan body that oversees election in the state, from her role.

Observers are deeply concerned. Running an election is an enormously complicated enterprise. Having deeply experienced people leave the field creates an opening for inexperienced, and potentially more partisan people, to fill that void.

“Intimidating the professionals who run elections, saying elections are rigged orfraudulent, altering state laws to allow partisans, as opposed to professionals, the final say in who wins elections, will be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Ben Ginsberg, a longtime prominent GOP elections lawyer, said this week. “No one will have faith in elections.”

Campaigns for secretary of state

At the top of the election bureaucracy in most states is a secretary of state, the chief election official. These secretaries can act alone to automatically mail out absentee ballot applications, for instance, or implement rules around ballot drop boxes. Overlooked for years, these officials wield an enormous amount of unilateral power.

“There is no one person who has as much authority [in] protecting the will of the people as the secretary of state,” Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, told me in an interview. “They can do enormous damage but they can also do enormous good.”

Trump has endorsed candidates running for secretary of state in almost every swing state, including Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. All the candidates he has endorsed have supported the idea that the election was stolen.

Last year, secretaries of state stood as bulwarks against Trump’s efforts to undermine the election. Officials like Benson debunked some of Trump’s wildest claims. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, refused to go along with Trump’s request to “find” more than 11,000 votes in Georgia and overturn the results.

Lingering distrust in elections

There is still a staggering number of people who remain unconvinced of the 2020 election results. A September CNN poll found 78% of Republicans do not believe Biden won.

Trump’s baseless claims about the election have had an impact. And that’s deeply alarming – a functioning democracy depends on all voters, regardless of whether their candidate won or lost, accepting the results.

Also worth watching …

• The Atlantic profiled Crystal Mason, the Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison for using a provisional ballot in 2016. Mason’s case, the profile points out, shows the devastating consequences of unfounded claims about fraud.

• BuzzFeed News has a great look at how election deniers are going door to door in some places across the country.

• Texas restarted an effort to remove non-citizens from its voting rolls, sparking concerns officials may be targeting eligible voters.