Emails reveal ties between election officials and far-right sheriffs

In Arizona and Michigan, newly obtained emails shed light on troubling coordination between election officials and the "constitutional" sheriffs' movement.

Note: I’m in Michigan, it’s gray, and I’m spending all day in the Gerald Ford Library listening to election officials from swing states talk about important stuff. Updates to follow…

Across the country, conservative officials and activists are engaged in sweeping efforts to call the results of November’s election into question. But that’s just the most public-facing part of efforts that include much behind-the-scenes work on how election officials from secretaries of state and governors to members of Congress can manipulate election certification processes and parliamentary maneuvers to install Donald Trump as president — whether he actually wins the election or not. 

The latest revelation on these widespread efforts to subvert the coming election is out at the Guardian this week, in the form of a report of mine on emails showing county election officials in Georgia coordinating on messaging and policies that essentially seek to invalidate votes from Democrats through legally questionable voter purges and selective use of election certification. It’s just the latest in a trio of stories from the past few weeks that lay bare Republicans’ plan to subvert — and possibly try to overturn — the November election. 

That three-pronged plan at the local and statewide level includes coordinating with right-wing media to continue to sow distrust in elections, implementing rules and policies that favor Trump, and deploying activist networks to harass election offices and perhaps even try to infiltrate their security systems. 

As I’ve reported over and over again here at American Doom, election deniers who support Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in 2020 — claims that he is already making ahead of 2024 — are in place nationwide. The emails that I revealed in my Guardian story today provide just a hint of what their efforts look like. Other emails that came in this tranche of records, which I obtained thanks to public records requests filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), lay out another, possibly even more dangerous, means by which election deniers may plan to ignore the will of the people in November should Vice President Kamala Harris prevail in the election.

The emails show that a former election official in Michigan was in communication with a far-right sheriff who has become an outspoken proponent of the election denial movement — and who is seen as a prominent voice regarding law enforcement’s role in the stolen election claims to come. 

On May 8, Bonnie Hakkola, a canvasser in Delta County, Michigan, emailed Sheriff Ed Oswald about “fishy” results of a recall election for three county commissioners held the previous day. 

“Three commissioners were under a recall and the election was yesterday and we noticed

that the statistics look fishy, in fact two of the results are identical,” Hakkola wrote to Oswald, noting that the margin of victory for candidates in two of the county commission’s districts were the same — 2.64 percent. “Also, many people are calling and saying they don't think these numbers are correct.”

Hakkola concluded her email by saying she felt a “forensic audit” over the results was in order. With Oswald apparently out of the office that day, Hakkola reached out to Joanne Bakale, a member of an election denier group called the Election Integrity Force. Bakale provided Hakkola with contact information for Sheriff Dar Leaf, an election denier and rising voice in a wing of the constitutional sheriffs’ movement that is focused on investigating election irregularities and enforcing election law.

“Sheriff Dar Leaf,” Hakkola began. “Please see letter below and the attachment of election results which I sent to our Sheriff Ed Oswald who I am hearing is out of town and I don't think has received this email yet. Thank you for any help you can provide to hopefully obtain some forensic information of our election.”

Hakkola’s email is the first known instance of a Michigan election official coordinating with Leaf to call election results into question. Too bad it’s three years old and we didn’t know about this coordination at the time. Perhaps that would have hastened Hakkola’s resignation from the county canvassing board. Still, it’s an important line connecting election denialism and the constitutional sheriff movement. Thanks to this email, we have another data point in what I’ve begun to think of as the next election interference case, should a brave prosecutor want to take up that challenge.

Other data points can be found in emails CREW obtained from local election officials in Arizona. There, in Mohave County, emails show that county commissioners Ron Gould and Hildy Angius — both documented election deniers — spoke at an event of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) in 2021. 

For those who are unfamiliar with the CSPOA, Devin Burghart has a good write-up of their plans involving elections. “Instead of a January 6th-style centralized mass insurrection, these Florida activists developed a blueprint for a county-by-county-style revolt,” Burghart writes. “They hope it becomes a national model for sustained insurrection, ‘the template for the rest of the country to follow.’”

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