NYT:

Some of the loudest Stop the Steal voices on the right are actually far removed from the levers of America’s election machinery. When a member of Congress makes false claims about hacked voting machines or stolen ballots, he or she has little authority to do much about it.

Across the United States, however, there are tens of thousands of state, county and local officials who do have that power. They will set and enforce the rules on voting, then go about counting and reporting the votes in the elections to come.

To the alarm of independent experts, allies of Donald Trump have been targeting these once-anonymous offices, seeking to fill them with hard-core partisans all the way down to the level of precinct captain.

Now, the Democratic organization American Bridge, known primarily for its opposition research into Republicans, has launched what it says is a $10 million campaign to influence the races for election administration in a dozen key states. The local elections project is part of a $100 million paid media campaign that American Bridge announced a year ago.

The group has hired 22 researchers to scrub the records and public statements of candidates and officials running for statewide offices involved in election administration, along with the sort of races unlikely to garner attention outside of their communities: county boards of supervisors, boards of canvassers, local judges and state legislators. They plan to dig up dirt on officials and candidates to ruin their chances of getting elected or re-elected.

“It’s about how do we take what we’ve already been expert at and expose the behavior of Republican candidates and officeholders and take it down ballot to these secretaries of state races, the attorneys general races, as well as on down the ballot to the county level,” said Jessica Floyd, the American Bridge president.

The sheer scale of America’s decentralized election system presents a formidable challenge to anyone seeking to influence it. In Wisconsin alone, there are 1,850 municipal clerks who administer voting, with rules set by a bipartisan six-member state commission, whose members are appointed by state legislators and the governor.

Rick Hasen, the author of several books about elections and democracy, said the use of such hardball political tactics in local elections was “probably a necessary evil.” He added: “Efforts to subvert elections can happen in lots of places.”