Meet the Republican election officials in Arkansas who believe in election lies

American Doom can exclusively report on the election deniers who have power over elections and voting in Arkansas.

The pastor sat on a stage wearing a large American flag lapel pin and small black crosses in the place of buttons to hold down the collar of his starched white dress shirt. He shared what God had been telling him.

“I hear something in the great spirit realm that great change is in the air, and this is part of the indication that God’s got his finger on this country,” said the pastor, Hank Kunneman. “He’s got his finger on the Senate, the House, the White House and I’m telling you, justice is coming, and it’s going to be served.”

Kunneman is one of a not-insignificant number of pastors who combine politics and evangelical Christianity from the pulpit. This means he is a grifter, feeding off the fear and insecurities of mostly white evangelicals who believe in things like widespread election fraud, the second coming of Jesus Christ, and the holy and just reign of Donald Trump.

Like millions of Americans, Kunneman believes he is engaged in a battle for America’s soul, and that God supports his side — the side of those who believe in election fraud and view Trump as a messiah figure. While that’s troubling, it’s not news. We’ve known for years now that election denialism and the cult-like Christian affinity for Trump has infected many of our fellow Americans. What is news is that there are hundreds if not thousands of men and women who hold these extremist beliefs and are currently working as election officials across the country. The woman who shared the video of Kunneman — the only reason I know that his particular combination of unhinged Christianity and sectarian religious politics exists — is one of those people. Her name is Nancy Anderson, and she is a member of the Clark County Election Commission in Arkansas.

Anderson is one of almost 30 county election commissioners throughout the state who has shared content on Facebook that would make many of us look askance at a friend, let alone someone appointed to oversee important tasks like determining whether absentee ballots should be counted, or whether election results should be certified. While Anderson hasn’t posted specifically about election conspiracies (that I can see publicly), many of her fellow Republican county election officials have. A review of all Republican county election commissioners in Arkansas found election officials posting scores of conspiracies about widespread voter fraud, Dominion voting machines, and the attack on the Capitol on January 6. Some, like Anderson, called for prayer to help Trump win in 2020. Since then, some have called for a return to godly principles to ensure that Trump returns to power. 

“No doubt the greatest president of my lifetime,” Paulette Yarbrough, an election commissioner in Cleburne County, wrote in September 2021. “After the crooked election he could have gone home and lived a perfectly comfortable life but no he chose to continue to fight for you and for me in an attempt to save our country from the radical left. God bless Donald Trump and God bless the USA.”

American Doom scoured Facebook for the personal pages of Republican election commissioners in all of Arkansas’ 75 counties. We were able to find profiles for about 40 commissioners. Of those, 19 shared blatant election denier content; nine commissioners shared content that points toward election denialism; and a handful of others shared posts with broadly far-right themes like Christian nationalism, confederate symbolism, and intimations of violence against the government. The remaining commissioners’ pages either did not have obvious signs of election denialism or were private. 

Here are the election-denying election officials of Arkansas.