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      Trump-Backed Conspiracy Theorist Vies to Take Over Arizona Elections

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      PHOENIX — This spring, Mark Finchem traveled to Mar-a-Lago for the premiere of a documentary advancing the specious notion that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from President Donald J. Trump by an army of leftists stuffing drop boxes with absentee ballots. As a state representative and candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, Mr. Finchem was a minnow among the assembled MAGA stars, the likes of Rudolph W. Giuliani and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.But he still got his face time.“President Trump took 20 minutes with me,” Mr. Finchem later recounted during a campaign stop. “And he said: ‘I want you to understand something. The Arizona secretary of state race is the most important race in the United States.’”Arizona, of course, occupies a special place on Mr. Trump’s map of election indignities — as the onetime Republican stronghold where President Biden’s narrow and crucial victory was first called by, of all networks, Fox News. Should Mr. Trump run again in 2024, a friendly secretary of state, as administrator of the state’s elections, could be in a position to help him avoid a repeat.Now, as Arizona prepares for its primaries on Tuesday, Mr. Finchem is the candidate of a Trump-backed America First coalition of more than a dozen 2020 election deniers who have sought once-obscure secretary of state posts across the country. While most of them have been considered extremist long shots, a recent poll gave Mr. Finchem an edge in Arizona’s four-way Republican race, though a significant majority of voters are undecided.Mr. Finchem’s campaign pronouncements are testament to the evolution of the “Stop the Steal” movement: It is as much about influencing future elections as it is about what happened in 2020.Mark Finchem, a proponent of the “Stop the Steal” narrative, appeared with former President Donald J. Trump at a rally this past month in Prescott Valley, Ariz.Ash Ponders for The New York TimesTo that end, Mr. Finchem, who has identified himself as a member of the Oath Keepers militia in the past, may be the perfectly subversive candidate. Like his America First compatriots, he seeks, quite simply, to upend voting.He wants to ban early voting and sharply restrict mail-in ballots, even though the latter were widely popular in Arizona long before the pandemic. He is already suing to suspend the use of all electronic vote-counting machines in Arizona, in litigation bankrolled by the conspiracy theorist and pillow tycoon Mike Lindell. And he has co-sponsored a bill that would give the state’s Republican-led legislature authority to overturn election results.If he loses his own race, Mr. Finchem told a June fund-raiser, “ain’t gonna be no concession speech coming from this guy.”Mr. Finchem did not respond to requests for comment for this article, and one of his lawyers declined to comment. But in a May email he assured Republican supporters that if he had been in office in 2020, “we would have won. Plain and simple.” In the days after the election, he was co-host of an unofficial hearing at a downtown Phoenix hotel where Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, aired bogus stolen-elections claims. He was instrumental in trying to advance a slate of fake Trump electors in Arizona — part of a scheme to overturn the elections in a number of states that is being investigated by the Justice Department — and he is helping gather signatures to petition to decertify the state’s election results, even though that is not legally possible.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      Eric Greitens May Just Get What He Deserves

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      On Tuesday, Republican voters in Missouri will send a signal to G.O.P. leaders nationwide about what they will and won’t accept in a top candidate in the party’s current, Trumpian era: Namely, do they want a Senate nominee who exists in a perpetual swirl of scandal, including fresh accusations of domestic violence?For much of Missouri’s Senate primary race, it sure seemed Republicans were content to careen down this path. Consistently, if narrowly, the crowded G.O.P. field was led by Eric Greitens, the state’s disgraced former governor. Leaning into his bad boy rep, Mr. Greitens sold himself as an ultra-MAGA warrior being persecuted by his political enemies — just like a certain former president! — and a good chunk of the party’s base seemed ready, even eager, to buy his line.But it appears that MAGA may have its limits even in a deep-red state like Missouri. Certainly, electability has mattered more for many Republican officials and donors there, who have been less than enthusiastic about Mr. Greitens’s candidacy. It’s not necessarily that they found his behavior morally disqualifying — this is, after all, Donald Trump’s G.O.P. — so much as they were afraid his scandals would make him a weak general election candidate. (Democrats were certainly raring to run against him.) Losing this seat, currently held by the Republican Roy Blunt, who is retiring, would be a blow to the party’s midterm dream of winning control of the Senate. But efforts to nudge Mr. Greitens out of the race only ticked him off and provided fodder for his martyr self-mythologizing. He looked to be a classic example of how the G.O.P. had lost control of its MAGA monster.Until late last month. That’s when a group of Republicans rolled out a super PAC, named Show Me Values, aimed at bringing down Mr. Greitens. Just a few weeks — and an estimated $6 million in ad spending — later, the effort seems to be working. Multiple polls show the former governor’s support slipping, dropping him behind a couple of his opponents. The state’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, appears to have taken the lead. He, too, is an election-denying Trump suck-up. But at this point the G.O.P. is operating on a curve; simply weeding out those alleged to be abusers and other possible criminals can feel like a major achievement.Polls are not votes, and the race remains too tight for anyone to exhale. But with only days to go, it looks as though Mr. Greitens’ political resurrection may flop. This would be a good thing for the people of Missouri. It could also serve as a model, or at least an encouraging data point, for more sensible Republicans looking to stave off the worst actors and excesses of Trumpism — and maybe eventually put their party back on the road to sanity.In an election cycle awash in MAGA bomb throwers vying for the title of biggest jerk, Mr. Greitens has been a top contender. Charismatic, combative and shameless, he is in many ways the essence of Trumpism. Heading into the race, he bore the stench of the multiple scandals — including allegations of sexual misconduct — that led him to step down as governor in 2018 to avoid impeachment by the state’s Republican-dominated legislature.Then, this March, his ex-wife filed an affidavit as part of a child custody dispute, swearing that he had physically abused her and their young son. (He has denied those allegations and, of course, blames dirty politics.) This was an offense too far for many Republicans, some of whom called on Mr. Greitens to leave the race. Among these was Senator Josh Hawley, who asserted, “If you hit a woman or a child, you belong in handcuffs, not the United States Senate.”When you’ve lost the guy who gave the infamous fist salute to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, you know you’ve crossed a red line.In another era, or another party, a candidate dragging around such sordid baggage might have slouched quietly away. But Mr. Greitens has adopted the Trump guide to making vileness and suspected criminality work for you: Brace up, double down and bray that any and all allegations are just part of — all together now! — a political witch hunt.Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Greitens is a political grievance peddler. Also like Mr. Trump, he saves his most concentrated bile for fellow Republicans. One of the most puerile ads of the midterms thus far has been Mr. Greitens’s “RINO hunting” spot, in which he leads a group of armed men in tactical gear as they storm a lovely little suburban home in search of G.O.P. heretics. “Get a RINO hunting permit,” Mr. Greitens urges. “There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.” Banned by Facebook, flagged by Twitter and trashed by pretty much everyone, the ad is pure political trolling.It was around the time of the RINO hunting ad that the Show Me Values PAC was announced. Team Greitens responded with characteristic invective. “These swamp creatures and grifters know their time at the trough is finished,” said Dylan Johnson, the campaign manager. “That’s why they’re scared of America First champion Governor Greitens.”Whatever its roots, fear is a powerful motivator. Show Me Values began gobbling up ad time like Skittles, becoming the race’s biggest spender on TV. The spots detailing the abuse allegations by Mr. Greitens’s ex-wife appear particularly devastating. It seems that, with the proper message — and money to drive that message home — even the most flamboyant MAGA candidates can perhaps be deflated.Mr. Trump did not pioneer the brazen-it-out strategy being attempted by Mr. Greitens. But he perfected and popularized it, and under his reign, the G.O.P. has grown ever more willing to tolerate its politicians’ sketchy, creepy, violent and possibly illegal behavior, as long as they toed the line.Just look at Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, who won his primary in May, putting him on a glide path to a third term. Republican voters stuck by him despite his having been under indictment on charges of securities fraud and other naughtiness since 2015 and, in 2020, having had multiple staff members ask federal authorities to investigate him for a smorgasbord of “potential criminal offenses.”And for sheer MAGA shamelessness, it’s hard to top Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Panhandle’s trash-talking mini-Trump. It takes real moxie to fund-raise off the fact that one is being investigated by the feds on suspicion of child sex trafficking. But that is how Matt rolls, and his voters seem cool with it.This is not the mark of a healthy political party. Neither is it sustainable. Republican leaders need to get serious about reining in the Frankenstein’s monsters they have so long nurtured — before the party devolves even further into a circus of thugs, grifters and conspiracy nutters. This Tuesday, Missouri voters will, hopefully, take a baby step in that direction.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Doug Mastriano says his antisemitic ally ‘doesn’t speak for me’

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      After days avoiding questions about antisemitic remarks by a supporter of his campaign, Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, said on Thursday that he rejected “antisemitism in any form.’’Mr. Mastriano has faced mounting criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike since it was revealed in early July that he paid $5,000 in campaign funds to the far-right social media site Gab. The payment, for “consulting,’’ apparently was intended to bring Mr. Mastriano a broader following on Gab, which is known as a haven for white nationalists and users banned from other platforms.In defending Mr. Mastriano’s ties to Gab in recent days, its founder, Andrew Torba, repeatedly made antisemitic remarks and said in one video that neither he nor Mr. Mastriano would give interviews to non-Christian journalists.Mr. Mastriano on Thursday did not condemn Mr. Torba. He blamed Democrats and “the media” for the controversy. “Andrew Torba doesn’t speak for me or my campaign,’’ Mr. Mastriano wrote in a statement released on Twitter. “I reject anti-Semitism in any form. Recent smears by the Democrats and the media are blatant attempts to distract Pennsylvanians from suffering inflicted by Democrat policies.”While Mr. Mastriano had remained silent about Gab earlier, Mr. Torba had responded to reports about the payment by Mr. Mastriano’s campaign in a series of livestreamed videos.“My policy is not to conduct interviews with reporters who aren’t Christian or with outlets who aren’t Christian, and Doug has a very similar media strategy where he does not do interviews with these people,” Mr. Torba said in one video, according to The Jerusalem Post. “He does not talk to these people. He does not give press access to these people. These people are dishonest. They’re liars. They’re a den of vipers, and they want to destroy you.”On Tuesday, Mr. Torba used an antisemitic trope in response to criticism from the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, who had condemned Mr. Mastriano for using Gab to post messages and gain political supporters.“We’re not bending the knee to the 2 percent anymore,” Mr. Torba said in a video, an apparent reference to the rough percentage of the country that is Jewish. “We’re taking back our country,” he added. “We’re taking back our government, so deal with it.”Mr. Mastriano, a far-right Pennsylvania state senator who has falsely argued that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, rarely speaks to traditional news outlets.In recent days, pressure from Republicans in Pennsylvania and beyond for Mr. Mastriano to condemn Gab and quit the site has grown. Andy Reilly, the national Republican committeeman for Pennsylvania, who hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Mastriano at his suburban Philadelphia home on Wednesday, said in an interview that Gab was “shameful” and “shouldn’t be part of the usual political dialogue.”“Doug should make sure he makes it clear that he doesn’t agree with the people posting hateful things on the site,’’ Mr. Reilly said several hours before Mr. Mastriano released his statement on Thursday evening.The two-paragraph statement neither addressed whether Mr. Mastriano, like Mr. Torba, follows a policy of not giving interviews to non-Christian news outlets, nor clarified why he had paid Gab $5,000. According to reporting by HuffPost, Mr. Mastriano may have paid Gab to increase his following on the site: New users appeared to be automatically assigned as followers of the Republican nominee.About an hour before Mr. Mastriano’s statement was posted, Mr. Torba wrote on Gab that he did not work for the Mastriano campaign and was not its consultant. “The campaign paid Gab as a business for advertising during the primary,” he said. “The campaign posts on Gab, as do 50+ other campaigns from around the country. That’s the extent of the relationship.”Later on Thursday, Mr. Mastriano made his Gab account private and then removed it, according to The Forward.The Democratic nominee for governor, Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, responded to Mr. Mastriano’s statement Thursday by recalling his praise for Mr. Torba in May: “Thank God for what you’ve done.” More

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      Doug Mastriano Faces Criticism Over His Backing From Antisemitic Ally

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      Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, is under increasing scrutiny over his connections to the far-right social media platform Gab and its founder, who has repeatedly made antisemitic remarks defending their ties.Early this month, news emerged that Mr. Mastriano’s campaign had paid Gab, a haven for white nationalists and users banned from other platforms, $5,000 for “consulting,” according to a state filing that was first uncovered by Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog group.Since then, Mr. Mastriano, a far-right state senator who has falsely argued that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and who rarely speaks to traditional news outlets, has ignored criticism of his association with Gab.But the platform’s founder and chief executive, Andrew Torba, has hit back — most recently, using an anti-Jewish trope.“We’re not bending the knee to the 2 percent anymore,” Mr. Torba said in a video this week, an apparent reference to the rough percentage of the country that is Jewish.Mr. Torba was responding to an appearance on MSNBC on Tuesday by Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, in which he criticized Mr. Mastriano for using Gab to post messages and gain political supporters.Mr. Torba and his platform support Christian nationalism, the view that America was founded to advance Christians and biblical values.“We’re taking back our country,” he added. “We’re taking back our government, so deal with it.”“Andrew Torba is one of the most toxic people in public life right now,” Mr. Goldblatt told MSNBC. “Elected officials who engage in this kind of rhetoric aren’t just flirting with fascism, they are bringing it to the forefront of their political argument.”Shortly after the payment from the Mastriano campaign, in April, Mr. Torba interviewed Mr. Mastriano on his site, when the candidate told him, “Thank God for what you’ve done.”Before Pennsylvania’s May 17 primary, Gab endorsed Mr. Mastriano, who was at the forefront of Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 results in the state.Mr. Mastriano won the nomination in a divided field, despite warnings by some Republican officials that he was too extreme to win in November. Recent polls have shown him running an unexpectedly close race against the Democratic nominee, Josh Shapiro.According to reporting by HuffPost, Mr. Mastriano may be paying Gab to increase his following on the site: New users appeared to be automatically assigned as followers of the Republican nominee.In a series of live-streamed videos in recent days, Mr. Torba, who is based in Pennsylvania, responded repeatedly to criticism of him and Mr. Mastriano by reinforcing his own Christian nationalist and antisemitic views.The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday quoted Mr. Torba as saying in one video that neither he nor Mr. Mastriano would give interviews to non-Christian journalists.“My policy is not to conduct interviews with reporters who aren’t Christian or with outlets who aren’t Christian, and Doug has a very similar media strategy where he does not do interviews with these people,” Mr. Torba reportedly said. “He does not talk to these people. He does not give press access to these people. These people are dishonest. They’re liars. They’re a den of vipers and they want to destroy you.”Mr. Mastriano did not respond to a request for comment sent to his campaign.Mr. Torba, asked for details of his consulting arrangement with Mr. Mastriano, responded in an email: “I only speak to Christian news outlets.”Republican and Democratic Jewish leaders alike have called for Mr. Mastriano to leave Gab. “We strongly urge Doug Mastriano to end his association with Gab, a social network rightly seen by Jewish Americans as a cesspool of bigotry and antisemitism,” Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told The Philadelphia Inquirer last week.In Pittsburgh, Jewish and Black leaders condemned Mr. Mastriano for his association with Gab, which was used to post antisemitic attacks by the man accused of massacring 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.Mr. Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, began an investigation of Gab after the killings, though he eventually dropped it.On Monday, Mr. Shapiro, who is Jewish, appealed to donors in a tweet to “stop” Mr. Mastriano, who he said “is paying Gab — the same platform that empowered the Tree of Life killer — thousands of dollars to recruit antisemites and white supremacists to his campaign.” More

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      2020 Election Deniers Seek Out Powerful Allies: County Sheriffs

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      LAS VEGAS — An influential network of conservative activists fixated on the idea that former President Donald J. Trump won the 2020 election is working to recruit county sheriffs to investigate elections based on the false notion that voter fraud is widespread.The push, which two right-wing sheriffs’ groups have already endorsed, seeks to lend law enforcement credibility to the false claims and has alarmed voting rights advocates. They warn that it could cause chaos in future elections and further weaken trust in an American voting system already battered by attacks from Mr. Trump and his allies.One of the conservative sheriffs’ groups, Protect America Now, lists about 70 members, and the other, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, does not list its membership but says it conducted trainings on various issues for about 300 of the nation’s roughly 3,000 sheriffs in recent years. It is unclear how many sheriffs will ultimately wade into election matters. Many aligned with the groups are from small, rural counties.But at least three sheriffs involved in the effort — in Michigan, Kansas and Wisconsin — have already been carrying out their own investigations, clashing with election officials who warn that they are overstepping their authority and meddling in an area where they have little expertise.“I’m absolutely sick of it,” said Pam Palmer, the clerk of Barry County, Mich., where the sheriff has carried out an investigation into the 2020 results for more than a year. “We didn’t do anything wrong, but they’ve cast a cloud over our entire county that makes people disbelieve in the accuracy of our ability to run an election.”In recent years, sheriffs have usually taken a limited role in investigations of election crimes, which are typically handled by state agencies with input from local election officials. Republican-led state legislatures, at the same time, have pushed to impose harsher criminal penalties for voting infractions, passing 20 such laws in at least 14 states since the 2020 election.“This is all part and parcel of returning to a world where we’re using the criminal law in a way to make voting harder,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, the interim co-director of the Voting Rights Project at the A.C.L.U. “All the things that used to feel more fringy no longer feel so fringy, as we’re starting to see this very much collective effort.”Richard Mack, center, the founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, appeared at FreedomFest, a recent event in Las Vegas attended by a range of libertarians and conservatives.Alexandra Berzon/The New York TimesThe sheriff of Racine County in Wisconsin, the state’s fifth-most-populous county, is trying to charge state election officials with felonies for measures they took to facilitate safe voting in nursing homes during the pandemic.In Barry County in Michigan, a rural area that voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump, the sheriff has been investigating the 2020 election after becoming involved with efforts by people working on Mr. Trump’s behalf to try to gain access to voting machines.And the sheriff of Johnson County in Kansas, which includes suburbs of Kansas City and is the most populous county in the state, has said he is broadly investigating the county’s 2020 election. At a recent meeting with election officials, he questioned their procedures and integrity, according to a written account from the county’s top lawyer, who sent him a letter expressing concern that he was interfering in election matters.The Johnson County sheriff, Calvin Hayden, said in an interview that sheriffs faced a learning curve.“We don’t know anything about elections,” he said. “We’re cops. We have to educate ourselves on the system, which takes a long, long time.”More From Democracy ChallengedRight-Wing Radio Disinformation: Conservative commentators falsely claim that “Democrats cheat” to win elections, contributing to the belief that the midterm results cannot be trusted.Jan. 6 Timeline: We pieced together President Donald J. Trump’s monthslong campaign to subvert American democracy and cling to power.The Far-Right Christian Push: A new wave of U.S. politicians is mixing religious fervor with conspiracy theories, even calling for the end of the separation of church and state.A Cautionary Tale on Democracy: A New Hampshire man pushed through a drastic budget change in his “Live Free or Die” town, angering the community — and jolting it out of indifference.Hatching election plans in Las VegasThe three sheriffs gathered with a few hundred others at a forum this month in Las Vegas hosted by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.Attendees included leaders of True the Vote, a group whose work spreading discredited theories of mass voter fraud inspired the conspiratorial film “2000 Mules”; Mike Lindell, the Trump ally and MyPillow chief executive; and other prominent figures in the 2020 election-denial movement.Speakers urged more sheriffs to open investigations of the 2020 election, which they compared to a rigged sporting event, presenting evidence that rehashed long-disproved theories. One speaker said the way that betting odds had changed on election night constituted proof of a stolen election.Some of the arguments centered on the premise of “2000 Mules”: that an army of left-wing operatives wrongfully flooded drop boxes with absentee ballots in 2020. Many, including William P. Barr, Mr. Trump’s former attorney general and Georgia state officials, have pointed to major flaws in the supposed findings and the flimsy evidence presented.Still, Richard Mack, the founder of the constitutional sheriffs association, said the accusations made in “2000 Mules,” which was released in May, were a “smoking gun” and had persuaded him to make election issues his group’s top priority.Mr. Lindell said in an interview that he and his team had offered the three sheriffs “all of our resources,” including computer experts and data on voters, but that he had made no financial commitments.Mr. Mack speaking at FreedomFest. He said in an interview that accusations of voter fraud made in the conspiratorial film “2000 Mules” were a “smoking gun.”Alexandra Berzon/The New York TimesThe Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which was formally founded about a decade ago by Mr. Mack, is dedicated to the theory that sheriffs are beholden only to the Constitution and serve as the ultimate authority in a county — above local, state and federal officials and statutes. The group, whose leaders have promoted Christian ideology in government, has been active in supporting fights against gun control laws, immigration laws and federal land management.Protect America Now, founded by Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County, Ariz., and Republican operatives, was announced shortly after the 2020 election. Its principles closely align with many of the constitutional sheriffs association’s, but it has employed more traditional political methods such as running ads.Attempts to interview Mr. Lamb, who has not announced local investigations into election issues, were unsuccessful. Discussing his partnership with True the Vote at a Trump rally in Arizona on Friday, he said sheriffs would do more to hold people accountable for violating election laws. “We will not let happen what happened in 2020,” he said.For conservative activists focused on voter fraud, an alliance with law enforcement seemed natural.True the Vote initially approached state and federal law enforcement agencies with its election claims, but did not provide sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation, officials said.In partnership with Protect America Now, the group has now raised $100,000 toward a goal of $1 million for grants to sheriffs for more video surveillance and a hotline to distribute citizen tips.True the Vote’s executive director, Catherine Engelbrecht, said in a speech at the Las Vegas event that in sheriffs, she had found a receptive audience for her claims.“It’s the sheriffs,” she said. “That’s who we can trust.”A troubled history of law enforcement at the pollsSome conservative activists have also floated the idea of increasing the presence of sheriffs wherever ballots are cast, counted and transported, echoing a proposal by Mr. Trump in 2020 that didn’t gain steam.Deputizing volunteers could even be an option, said Sam Bushman, the national operations director for the constitutional sheriffs association.Jim Marchant, the Republican nominee for secretary of state of Nevada and an attendee in Las Vegas, said that if elected, he would try to “bring sheriffs back in” to the election process.“The deputies are going to be there at the locations to watch for any anomaly,” he said in an interview.Jim Marchant, the Republican nominee for secretary of state in Nevada, said he would like to involve sheriffs in the election process.John Locher/Associated PressFor voting rights groups, the potential presence of law enforcement officers at polling locations evokes a darker period in American democracy, when the police were weaponized to suppress turnout by people of color.Because of this history, state and federal protections limit what law enforcement can do. In California and Pennsylvania, for example, it is a crime for officers to show up at the polls if they have not been called by an election official. In other states, including Flor­ida, North Caro­lina, Ohio and Wiscon­sin, officers must obey local elec­tion offi­cials at the polls, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.Sheriffs interviewed at the Las Vegas event said they were aware of such restrictions and did not want to impede voting. The Barry County, Mich., sheriff, Dar Leaf, said he was more focused on 2020 rather than looking ahead. Others, like Mr. Hayden, said they were considering increased video surveillance of drop boxes.Mr. Mack said, “I don’t think any sheriff is trying to intimidate people not to vote.”Some sheriffs from rural Trump-voting counties said they hadn’t observed major problems to fix in their own counties but supported more sheriff involvement overall. Richard Vaughn, a sheriff in rural Grayson County in Virginia, said he wanted officers to be involved in observing vote counts, and would support election investigations “in areas where there are allegations.” “A lot of people are losing confidence,” he added.Wide-ranging investigative scrutinyElection experts say the activities of the three sheriffs already raise concerns.Sheriff Hayden of Johnson County, Kan., said he had started investigating elections after receiving 200 citizen complaints.He is scrutinizing “ballot stuffing,” “machines” and “all of the issues you hear of nationally,” he said in an interview. Asked what he meant by ballot stuffing, he described the practice of delivering absentee ballots on behalf of other voters. (During the 2020 election, Kansas did not have a law regarding that practice; last year, it passed legislation allowing people to return no more than 10 ballots from other voters.)Mr. Hayden said in a statement that he disagreed with the county lawyer’s depiction of his meeting with election officials and that he was treating the elections work like any other investigation.“Our citizens want to have, and deserve to have, confidence in their local elections,” he said.Election workers sorting mail ballot applications in Olathe, Kan., in 2020. The sheriff of Johnson County, which includes Olathe, has said he is investigating elections.Charlie Riedel/Associated PressMr. Leaf has led an effort to try to investigate voting machines.Emails obtained last year from his department by the news site Bridge Michigan showed that a lawyer identifying Mr. Leaf as his client had communicated about seizing machines with Trump allies who were trying to prove 2020 election conspiracy theories.In December 2020, Mr. Leaf met with a cybersecurity specialist — who was part of the Trump allies’ network — to discuss voting machine concerns, Mr. Leaf said in an interview.Mr. Leaf said he had also been provided with a private investigator for election matters by another lawyer of his, who previously helped Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for Mr. Trump, bring a conspiratorial lawsuit seeking to overturn Michigan’s 2020 results.At one point, someone connected to Mr. Leaf’s investigation gained access to a voting tabulator, according to state police records. State authorities intervened and began investigating Mr. Leaf’s office.Over 18 months, Mr. Leaf’s investigative efforts have changed focus several times, and he has had three search warrant requests rejected for lack of evidence, Julie A. Nakfoor Pratt, the county’s top prosecutor, said in an interview.Mr. Leaf said in a statement, “I took an oath and obligation as sheriff to investigate all potential crimes reported to my office, including election law violations.”In Wisconsin, Mr. Schmaling has tried to charge statewide election officials with violating the law by temporarily suspending election oversight work in nursing homes.Those officials, who serve on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the state’s bipartisan arbiter of election matters, voted for the suspension in March 2020, as the pandemic was first raging. After investigating a complaint in November 2021, Mr. Schmaling said he had found eight instances of potential fraud.No fraud charges were filed in any of the cases.But in November, Mr. Schmaling issued criminal referrals for five of the six members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, recommending that the district attorneys in the counties where they live charge them with crimes including felonies.Three of the district attorneys have dismissed the referrals; two have not yet made a decision.Mr. Schmaling, who said his nursing home inquiry took up hundreds of hours, described his decisions as routine. “The bigger picture for me is we exposed something that was wrong, something illegal,” he said. “My goal is to make certain that the law is followed.”But others involved said the actions were an overreach of power.“The idea that the solution for an election whose results you didn’t like is, after the fact, to threaten criminal charges for that public work of a government official is shocking,” said Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, who faced a criminal referral. “It is chilling. It is the antithesis of how democracy works.” More

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      QAnon Candidates Aren’t Thriving, but Some of Their Ideas Are

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      PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Pamphlets, buttons and American flags cluttered booth after booth for political candidates at a conference center in Prescott, Ariz., this month. But the table for Ron Watkins, a Republican candidate for Congress who rose to fame for his ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory, sat empty.“I thought it started at 11:30,” said Orlando Munguia, Mr. Watkins’s campaign manager, who arrived about 30 minutes after the event had begun and hastily laid out campaign materials without the candidate in tow.Mr. Watkins, a computer programmer in his 30s, is running into the same reality that many other QAnon-linked candidates have confronted: Having ties to the conspiracy theory does not automatically translate to a successful political campaign.More established Republican rivals have vastly outraised Mr. Watkins in Arizona’s Second District. Two other congressional candidates in Arizona who have shown some level of support for QAnon also trail their competitors in fund-raising ahead of the Aug. 2 primary. A fourth Arizona candidate with QAnon ties has suspended his House campaign. The same trend is playing out nationally.Primary results for QAnon-linked candidates More

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      A Hidden New Threat to U.S. Elections

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      Some Republican-led counties are refusing to certify election results — a move that could throw American democracy into chaos if it becomes widespread.It’s been more than nine weeks since the Pennsylvania primary. The election is still not certified.The reason: Three counties — Berks, Fayette and Lancaster — are refusing to process absentee ballots that were received in a timely manner and are otherwise valid, except the voter did not write a date on the declaration printed on the ballot’s return envelope.The Pennsylvania attorney general has argued in court amid a lawsuit against those three counties that the state will not certify results unless they “include every ballot lawfully cast in that election” (emphasis theirs).The standoff in Pennsylvania is the latest attempt by conservative-leaning counties to disrupt, delay or otherwise meddle with the process of statewide election certification, a normally ceremonial administrative procedure that became a target of Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 contest.It’s happened in other states, too. Earlier this year, Otero County, a rural conservative area in southern New Mexico, refused to certify its primary election, citing conspiracy theories about voting machines, though no county commissioner produced evidence to legitimize their concerns.Eventually, under threat of legal action from the state’s attorney general and an order from the State Supreme Court, the commissioners relented and certified the county’s roughly 7,300 votes.Pro-democracy groups saw Otero County’s refusal to certify the results as a warning of potentially grave future crises, and expressed worries about how a state might be able to certify a presidential election under similar circumstances.The showdown in Pennsylvania is most likely less severe. The number of undated ballots is quite small, and if they had to, state officials could certify the election without counting those ballots, disenfranchising a small number of voters but preserving the ability to certify and send presidential electors to Congress (or elect a governor, senator or local official from the area). For now, the attorney general’s argument is to simply force the counting of every legal ballot.“It is imperative that every legal vote cast by a qualified voter is counted,” said Molly Stieber, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, Josh Shapiro, who is now the state’s Democratic nominee for governor. “The 64 other counties in Pennsylvania have complied and accurately certified their election results. Counties cannot abuse their responsibility for running elections as an excuse to unlawfully disenfranchise voters.”The battle over the undated envelopes in Pennsylvania also presages what is likely to be another litigious election season, in which partisans will look to contest as many ballots as possible to help their side win, seizing on technicalities and immaterial mistakes in an effort to cancel votes.Election experts say that such sprawling legal challenges, combined with false accusations of fraud, could create chaos akin to the 2020 election aftermath.More From Democracy ChallengedRight-Wing Radio Disinformation: Conservative commentators falsely claim that “Democrats cheat” to win elections, contributing to the belief that the midterm results cannot be trusted.Jan. 6 Timeline: We pieced together President Donald J. Trump’s monthslong campaign to subvert American democracy and cling to power.The Far-Right Christian Push: A new wave of U.S. politicians is mixing religious fervor with conspiracy theories, even calling for the end of the separation of church and state.A Cautionary Tale on Democracy: A New Hampshire man pushed through a drastic budget change in his “Live Free or Die” town, angering the community — and jolting it out of indifference.“Had this unfolded on this kind of timeline in 2020, it really could have created problems, because there would have been questions about whether the state could have actually named a slate of electors,” said Robert Yablon, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “You could imagine there being disputed slates of electors that were sent to Congress, and it could have been a big mess.”The issue reached the courts last year, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled in a dispute over a judicial election that ballots could not be discounted because voters had not dated the return envelope’s declaration. The Supreme Court upheld that decision in June.In Pennsylvania’s tight Republican primary race for Senate between Mehmet Oz, now the nominee, and David McCormick, a state court again ruled that the undated ballots must be counted, but also instructed counties to report two separate tallies to state election officials — one including the undated ballots, and one without them — should there be a later decision on appeal going the other way.So far, there has been no new opinion allowing counties to not count the ballots. Local officials in each county have declined to comment, citing the ongoing lawsuit.What to read this weekend about democracyIf Donald Trump takes back the White House in 2024, his allies plan to purge potentially thousands of civil servants from the federal government and fill career posts with MAGA loyalists, Jonathan Swan reports for Axios.In The Washington Post, Greg Sargent spoke with Rachel Kleinfeld, a scholar who has studied the breakdown of democracy and the rule of law in many countries. She warns that America is well along a trajectory toward more serious political violence.This election cycle, at least 120 Republicans who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential contest have won the party’s nomination, FiveThirtyEight calculates.briefing bookProtesters in Washington the night before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Mark Peterson/Redux, for The New York TimesA pocket history of ‘Stop the Steal’Blake Hounshell and On Politics chatted on Thursday with Charles Homans, a New York Times reporter who just published a landmark feature article in The Times Magazine on the history of the “Stop the Steal” movement. Our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:Your story is called “How ‘Stop the Steal’ Captured the American Right.” Was there ever any moment when that prospect was in doubt, or was it always destined to turn out this way?It’s impossible to imagine it taking root as it has if Donald Trump had conceded the election. That is the categorical difference between him and previous presidents. And it is what has distinguished “Stop the Steal” from the skepticism, both reasonable and conspiratorial, that surrounded previous elections.But if you look at the prehistory of the 2020 election, as I did in this story, it’s equally hard to imagine Trump conceding that election, or really any election. He was disputing the validity of elections he lost (and even some that he didn’t) going back to literally the first Republican caucus in 2016.And starting in those 2016 primaries, he had an ally in Roger Stone, who was trying to build a movement around Trump’s false claims — and linking those claims to the then-current preoccupation on the right with settling refugees from Syria and other predominantly Muslim countries.That connected Stop the Steal, from the beginning, to a whole cosmology of far-right conspiracism that extended well beyond Trump himself, and which you can still see reflected in the movement today.Do the politicians promoting Stop the Steal really believe this stuff? Or are some just playing along for political gain?Some do and some don’t. There are also Republican strategists and even some Stop the Steal activists who will complain (though rarely on the record) that the pursuit of the most baroque and obviously conspiracist claims about the election have given a bad name to what they argue would have otherwise been more credible arguments — in particular challenges to the legality of the expansions of absentee voting provisions and infrastructure in response to the pandemic in 2020 in some key states, which are generally thought to have helped Joe Biden.Those challenges have found success in the courts in only one state, Wisconsin, and no one has demonstrated that the expansions in question led to meaningful fraud (a point that even the conservative law firm that brought the Wisconsin lawsuit has made).But they do exist on a spectrum with the legal battles over voting rights that have played out between Republicans and Democrats and civil rights groups for years — the battles that William Barr, Trump’s former attorney general, is reportedly joining now — and don’t rely on proving a vast conspiracy of voting-machine manufacturers or finding bamboo fibers on ballots.The grass-roots activists who are most intensely engaged in the project of overturning the 2020 election, however, are often very invested in the voting machine conspiracies and a range of other unproven or debunked claims. So are the figures who have invested the most money in the cause, like Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive, and Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com chief executive.And of course, so is Trump, who personally directed his Justice Department officials to run down some of the most out-there claims, and who has continued to repeat them since.One takeaway from your story is that Trump has used this fantasy of a stolen election to solidify his hold over G.O.P. base voters. Yet it’s also driven many Republican elites and college-educated voters away. Help us assess the political costs and benefits.As Trump’s claims about the election have hardened into a tenet of Republican orthodoxy, they’ve paradoxically become less tied up with him personally. They have become part of a more generalized story the right tells about the groups it perceives as its enemies — Democrats, “RINOs,” the media, the intelligence community, state-level bureaucrats — and the supposed lengths they’re willing to go to keep the right’s champions out of power.Trump is a martyr in that story, and of course remains by far the largest-looming figure on the right. But I don’t think a restoration of the Trump presidency is a singular goal of even the movement crystallized around the false election claims.To your second point, there are obvious limits to this view of politics when it comes to winning over anyone who’s not already a partisan. What I wonder, though, is how much these views matter to voters who are not especially partisan or particularly engaged.The polling around this subject has consistently shown an asymmetry that clearly benefits Republicans: Republican voters are highly worried about threats to democracy (which they presumably define in Trump-aligned terms) and Democrats are much less so.This is where the Democrats’ tactic of openly helping some of the most Stop the Steal-minded candidates in this year’s Republican primaries, aside from its cynicism, also strikes me as strategically dubious insofar as it presumes that their views on the 2020 election are something that swing voters will actually hold against them.A certain religious fervor runs through the “Stop the Steal” movement. To what extent do conservative Christians see Trump as a kind of Messiah-like figure? And if they do, does that help explain the passion behind the belief that he was robbed of a second term?I don’t think that even many far-right Christians view Trump as a Messiah-like figure. They did broadly view him as someone who was willing and able to deliver a country that was governed in accordance with their view of Christianity and its relationship to the state.I’m talking here about the set of beliefs (discrete from, if often overlapping with, conservative evangelical Christianity) that are sometimes described as Christian nationalism: the belief that America is a fundamentally Christian nation whose founding documents were divinely inspired, and which is meant to be governed accordingly, whether or not its leader is particularly pious.That’s different from the kind of conservative evangelical politics that were ascendant in this country 20 or 30 years ago, and it is very prominent in Stop the Steal. I think it does inform the passion behind the belief in Trump’s false claims, but it also helps explain the fervent support for the efforts to overturn the election even among people who may not really buy this stuff.ViewfinderPresident Biden disembarking from Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday.Cheriss May for The New York TimesAn illuminating imageOn Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. Here’s what Cheriss May told us about capturing the image above:When presidents return to the White House late at night or early in the morning, it’s usually quiet and uneventful.But President Biden’s arrival home from his trip to the Middle East was a bit different.As he got back in the early hours of Sunday, I focused on him inside Marine One and noticed that he was illuminated by a bluish glow inside the aircraft as he spoke to the pilot and gave him a thumbs-up.It reminded me of the 1985 martial-arts movie “The Last Dragon,” when Taimak gets “the glow,” which gives him an extra burst of energy. At that moment, I knew it wouldn’t be the typical early-morning presidential arrival.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you on Monday.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Draghi’s Fall Reverberates Beyond Italy

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      The downfall of Italy’s prime minister has raised concerns across Europe about the power of populist movements and whether they will erode unity against Russian aggression.ROME — Just over a month ago, Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy boarded an overnight train with the leaders of France and Germany bound for Kyiv. During the 10-hour trip, they joked about how the French president had the nicest accommodations. But, more important, they asserted their resolute support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. The pictures of the men tucked in a cabin around a wooden conference table evoked a clubby style of crisis management reminiscent of World War II.The mere fact that Mr. Draghi had a seat at that table reflected how, by the force of his stature and credibility, he had made his country — one saddled by debt and persistent political instability — an equal partner with Europe’s most important powers. Critical to that success was not only his economic bona fides as the former president of the European Central Bank but also his unflinching recognition that Russia’s war presented as an existential challenge to Europe and its values.All of that has now been thrown into jeopardy since a multi-flanked populist rebellion, motivated by an opportunistic power grab, stunningly torpedoed Mr. Draghi’s government this week. Snap elections have been called for September, with polls showing that an alliance dominated by hard-right nationalists and populists is heavily favored to run Italy come the fall.Mr. Draghi’s downfall already amounts to the toppling of the establishment that populist forces across Europe dream of. It has now raised concerns, far transcending Italy, of just how much resilience the movements retain on the continent, and of what damage an Italian government more sympathetic to Russia and less committed to the European Union could do to the cohesion of the West as it faces perhaps its greatest combination of security and economic challenges since the Cold War.“Draghi’s departure is a real problem for Europe, a tough blow,” said Gianfranco Pasquino, professor emeritus of political science at Bologna University. “Draghi had a clear position against the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Europe will lose in compactness because the next prime minister will almost certainly be less convinced that the responsibility for the war lies with Russia.”If there was any question of where the sympathies of European leaders lie in Italy’s power struggle, before his downfall Mr. Draghi received offerings of support from the White House, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and others.Mario Draghi, left, and French President Emmanuel Macron examining debris as they visited Irpin, outside Kyiv, Ukraine, last month.Pool photo by Ludovic MarinPrime Minister Pedro Sanchez of Spain wrote “Europe needs leaders like Mario.” When Mr. Draghi made his last-ditch appeal to Italy’s fractious parties to stick with him on Wednesday, Prime Minister Antonio Costa of Portugal wrote him to thank him for reconsidering his resignation, according to a person close to Mr. Draghi.But now, with Mr. Macron lamenting the loss of a “Great Italian statesman,” anxiety has spread around the continent about what will come next.Mr. Draghi’s rebalancing of Italy’s position on Russia is all the more remarkable considering where it started. Italy has among Western Europe’s strongest bonds with Russia. During the Cold War, it was the home of the largest Communist Party in the West, and Italy depended on Russia for more than 40 percent of its gas.Mr. Draghi made it his mission to break that pattern. He leveraged his strong relationship with the U.S. treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, to spearhead the sanctions on the Russian Central Bank.By the example of his public speeches, he pressured his allies, including Mr. Macron, to agree that Ukraine should eventually be a member of the European Union.In the days before the fatal vote in the Senate that brought down his government, Mr. Draghi visited Algeria to announce a gas deal by which that country will supplant Russia as Italy’s biggest gas supplier.Those achievements are now at risk after what started last week as a rebellion within his coalition by the Five Star Movement, an ailing anti-establishment party, ended in a grab for power by conservatives, hard-right populists and nationalists who sensed a clear electoral opportunity, and went for the kill.They abandoned Mr. Draghi in a confidence vote. Now, if Italian voters do not punish them for ending a government that was broadly considered the country’s most capable and competent in years, they may come out on top in elections.Prime Minister Draghi speaking to ministers and Senators on Wednesday, the day his national unity coalition collapsed. Andreas Solaro/Agence France-Presse, via Getty ImagesThe maneuvering by the alliance seemed far from spontaneous.Ahead of the vote, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the hard-right League party, huddled with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi over a long sweaty lunch at the mogul’s villa on the Appian Way and discussed what to do.Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, a party with post-fascist roots who has incessantly called for elections from the opposition, said she spoke with Mr. Berlusconi a few days earlier and that he had invited her to the meeting as well, but that she demurred, saying it was better they meet after the vote. She said she spoke on the phone with Mr. Salvini only after Mr. Draghi’s speech in parliament.“I didn’t want them to be forced to do what they did,” she said, referring to Mr. Salvini and Mr. Berlusconi, who abandoned Mr. Draghi and collapsed the government. “I knew it would only work if they were sure about leaving that government.”Each has something to be gained in their alliance. Mr. Salvini, the hard right leader of the League party, not long ago the most popular politician in the country, had seen his standing eroded as part of Mr. Draghi’s government, while Ms. Meloni had gobbled up angry support from the opposition, supplanting him now as Italy’s rising political star. Mr. Berlusconi, nearly a political has-been at age 85, was useful and necessary to both, but also could use their coattails to ride back to power.Together, polls show, they have the support of more than 45 percent of voters. That is worrying to many critics of Russia. Mr. Salvini wore shirts with Mr. Putin’s face on them in Moscow’s Red Square and in the European Parliament, his party signed a cooperation deal with Mr. Putin’s Russia United party in 2017.Ms. Meloni, in what some analysts see as a cunning move to distinguish herself from Mr. Salvini and make herself a more acceptable candidate for prime minister, has emerged as a strong supporter of Ukraine.League leader Matteo Salvini and Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni meeting with with Silvio Berlusconi, right, in October 2021.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersMr. Berlusconi used to host Mr. Putin’s daughters at his Sardinian villa and was long Mr. Putin’s closest ally in Western Europe. But now, some of Mr. Berlusconi’s longtime backers say, he has forgotten his European values and crossed the Rubicon to the nationalist and Putin-enabling side.Renato Brunetta, Italy’s Minister for Public Administration, and a long time member of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, quit the party after it joined with the populist League party in withdrawing support from Mr. Draghi and destroying the government.He said he left because Mr. Berlusconi’s decision to abandon the government was irresponsible and antithetical to the values of the party over the last 30 years. Asked whether he believed Mr. Berlusconi, sometimes shaky, was actually lucid enough to make the decision, he said “it would be even more grave” if he was.Italy, long a laboratory for European politics, has also been the incubator for the continent’s populism and transformation of hard-right movements into mainstream forces.When Mr. Berlusconi entered politics, largely to protect his business interests in the 1990s, he cast himself as a pro-business, and moderate, conservative. But in order to cobble together a winning coalition, he had brought in the League and a post-fascist party that would become Ms. Meloni’s.Now the situation has inverted. Ms. Meloni and Mr. Salvini need Mr. Berlusconi’s small electoral support in order to win elections and form a government. They are in charge.“It is a coalition of the right, because it is not center-right anymore,” said Mr. Brunetta. “It’s a right-right coalition with sovereigntist tendencies, extremist and Putin-phile.”Supporters of Mr. Draghi take some solace in the fact that he will stick around in a limited caretaker capacity until the next government is seated, with control over issues related to the pandemic, international affairs — including Ukraine policy — and the billions of euros in recovery funds from Europe. That money is delivered in tranches, and strict requirements need to be met before the funds are released.Supporters of Mr. Draghi acknowledged that major new overhauls on major problems such as pensions were now off the table, but they argued that the recovery funds were more or less safe because no government, not even a hard-right populist one, would walk away from all that money, and so would follow through on Mr. Draghi’s vision for modernization funded by those euros.But if the last week has shown anything, it is that political calculations sometimes outweigh the national interest.Supporters of Prime Minister Draghi demonstrating in Milan on Monday.Mourad Balti Touati/EPA, via ShutterstockThe government’s achievements are already “at risk” over the next months of Mr. Draghi’s limited powers, said Mr. Brunetta, but if the nationalist front won, he said, “obviously it will be even worse.”Mr. Brunetta said Mr. Draghi arrived on the political scene in the first place because there was a “crisis of the traditional parties” in Italy. He said that the 17 months in government, and the support it garnered in the public, showed that there was “a Draghian constituency,” which wanted moderate, pragmatic and value-based governance.The problem, he said, was there were “no political parties, or especially a coalition, to represent them” and he hoped one could be born before the election but “there was little time.”And in the meantime, he said, some things were for sure. Italy had lost influence in Europe and the continent would suffer, too, for the loss of Mr. Draghi.“Europe,” he said, “is weakened.”Gaia Pianigiani More