Republican candidates for governor and secretary of state who have echoed former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rife with fraud have proposed changes in voting access and election certification that could have ramifications in key states in the next presidential election.
Seven Republicans running for those offices in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan and Nevada—all presidential battlegrounds—haven’t all detailed how they would oversee the 2024 election but have publicly touted measures they say would ensure election integrity, as they question the outcome of the 2020 race. Federal authorities have said there was no widespread fraud that would have changed the result, and several court challenges by the Trump campaign failed. All states certified President Biden’s victory.
Some of the changes the candidates support, such as tightening voter-identification rules or limiting absentee voting, align with measures Republicans have already passed or have been seeking to pass in other states. Other ideas they have floated go further.
Republican Kari Lake, who is in a race viewed as a tossup for governor in Arizona, has called for decertifying the results of the 2020 election in some close-run states including Arizona, which Mr. Biden won by just over 10,000 votes. The state’s Republican candidate for secretary of state, Mark Finchem, co-sponsored a bill that calls for state lawmakers to review the ballot tabulating process and accept or reject election results. It also would require election workers to count ballots by hand rather than relying on vote-counting machines. He is running against Democrat Adrian Fontes.
In Pennsylvania, Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano has said he could require everyone to re-register to vote if he were to win. He currently trails Democrat Josh Shapiro substantially in most polls. Such a move would violate federal law, said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. Mr. Mastriano didn’t respond to a request for comment.