Nearly 300 election deniers at work in local election offices

The final tally of election denial officials shows how widespread the belief system is.

It’s fitting that I’ve reached what I believe to be the final count of local election denial officials on election eve. This number — nearly 300 officials — has taken me years to arrive at. In that time, this newsletter has gone from a pet project to having thousands of subscribers. Many of you have chosen to sign up for a paid subscription, and I’m grateful for that. But many more of you remain free subscribers, and while I’m grateful you’re here as well, I’d like to encourage you to support my work by choosing a paid subscription for as little as $5 a month or providing a one-time contribution to our Doom Coffee Fund. I’m an independent journalist and your support helps keep it that way. Paid subscribers get access to paywalled posts featuring exclusive reporting, audio versions of posts for those moments when listening is preferred over reading, as well as access to live chats for major events — like tomorrow night. Speaking of, I’ll kick off a live chat to discuss incoming election results when polls close at 7 pm EST. If you’re a paid subscriber, you can join me there. So look out for an email in your inbox around that time. Now, onto the news…

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Nearly 300 local officials across the country have expressed skepticism of elections or outright support Donald Trump’s election lies, a combination of public databases, original American Doom research and press reports reveals.

Many of the officials have direct oversight of elections and serve on county election and canvassing boards. Some of the officials have indirect power over elections through their work as county commissioners or on other county government bodies. 

American Doom combined research from Informing Democracy, the Center for Media and Democracy, Public Wise and other sources — in addition to my original reporting on the issue of local election denial officials over the last three years — to reach the total number of nearly 300 election denialists or skeptics serving in local government. In many cases, these officials represent the front lines of counting and certifying Americans’ votes. They could cause chaos by refusing to certify these results or amplifying fraud claims, as they’ve done in the past.

Since 2020, at least 30 local election officials have refused to certify results in eight states, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found. The nearly 300 officials on American Doom’s list currently hold positions in Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. (A note about the methodology: I originally intended to look at local election officials in each of the 19 states that have varying levels of local election administration before realizing how big of a task that would be. That’s why you see two outliers in my list — Arkansas and Mississippi — amid the other states generally regarded as important swing states for this election.)

Explore Doom’s reporting on election denial officials

• NEW: Pennsylvania is teeming with election denial officials

• Emails reveal ties between election officials and far-right sheriffs

• "No way Trump can lose without fraud" - Election officials in the South preview election denial to come

• How election officials in the South have cheered on political violence

• Mississippi election officials espouse Christian nationalist beliefs, support political violence

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

Either through public statements on social media — like the one you see above from Jim Jackson, of Lee County, Mississippi — or official actions like voting against certification of results, these officials qualify as election deniers or skeptics, some more vociferous in their beliefs than others. They include the following number of officials in the nine states I focused on:

• Arizona - 24

• Arkansas - 16

• Georgia - 33

• Michigan - 50

• Nevada - 38

• North Carolina - 53

• Pennsylvania - 66

• Wisconsin - 16

• Mississippi - 12

You can view the full list here as well as individual profiles for many of the officials it contains. I ran out of time to create individual profiles for each of the nearly 300 officials, but you can view their profiles on Informing Democracy’s excellent Counties of Concern site.

One final thought, for now. If we don’t see widespread certification refusals in the wake of tomorrow’s election, it could serve as a repudiation of Trump’s election lies. With so many pro-Trump, election deniers serving in positions of election administration, their acceptance of a win by Vice President Kamala Harris could go a long way to convincing election deniers and skeptics in those locations that Trump did actually lose. Could being the operative word there. 

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