In last year’s midterm elections, a variety of far-right election deniers ran for secretary of state in their respective states, which was rather unsettling. It raised the prospect of far-right officials, who touted bizarre conspiracy theories, administering elections in key battlegrounds nationwide.
In most instances, these Republican candidates fell short, losing in Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan, for example.
But it’d be an exaggeration to say election deniers have failed to win any of these offices. MetroNews in West Virginia ran this report this week.
West Virginia’s chief elections officer, now a candidate for governor, has again said the 2020 presidential election was rigged. “The election was stolen, and it was stolen by the CIA,” Secretary of State Mac Warner, a Republican, said Thursday night during a MetroNews debate for gubernatorial candidates.
Yes, the man responsible for overseeing West Virginia’s system of elections argued, in apparent seriousness, that the Central Intelligence Agency secretly rigged the United States’ 2020 presidential election.
What’s more, Warner didn’t say this in some private setting, where he didn’t expect the public to hear him. Rather, the Republican official made this declaration during a televised debate.
He went on to suggest that the FBI was also involved in some kind of post-election cover-up. Just in case this isn’t already obvious, let’s go ahead and acknowledge the fact that there’s literally zero evidence suggesting the CIA and/or the FBI was engaged in some kind of plot to rig the 2020 election. The agencies — both of which were led by Trump appointees in 2020 — lacked the wherewithal to even attempt such a scheme, which makes the conspiracy theory that much more ludicrous. Nevertheless, these deeply strange ideas have circulated in GOP circles for quite a while. In the aftermath of Trump’s defeat three years ago, for example, Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania apparently believed there might’ve been secret Italian satellites rigging American voting machines and the Trump-appointed CIA director was in cahoots with the British. As for Warner’s future, it’s difficult to say with confidence whether his assertions will help or hurt his 2024 campaign for governor. His conspiratorial perspective has, however, helped the secretary of state secure the support of disgraced former White House national security advisor Michael Flynn, who has endorsed Warner’s candidacy.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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