The 2022 election was cast as a defining moment for the future of American democracy, as ballots were filled with election conspiracy-minded candidates running for the offices that actually oversee elections.
Most of the focus — including from yours truly — was on the very top of the pyramid: secretaries of state, who in most states serve as the chief election official. A cadre of Trump-aligned election deniers ran for that position in battleground states across the country.Every single one of them lost, either in a Republican primary or to a Democrat in November.
At the time, it was framed as a big victory for “lowercase d” democrats — the collective wins of election officials who aren’t likely to entertain a Trumpian attempt to overthrow an election were viewed as a critical bulwark for the security of the 2024 results.
Don’t be so sure.
A new report shared first with Nightly from Informing Democracy — an under-the-radar research nonprofit of election experts, researchers, and lawyers — argues that while it was a normative good that those top-of-the-ticket candidates lost, people are missing the forest for a few particularly tall trees.
In short, the report represents the pessimist’s case for the state of American democracy. Yes, some of the most notorious election deniers and conspiracists were defeated. But the true threat, the report argues, comes from the local level — from officials who are the ones literally counting the ballots and certifying elections, or state legislators in charge of making new election law. And so-called “anti-democracy” officials are thriving there.
“The reality of how elections are run is that it’s local officials at the county and municipal level who are the ones who actually have the most responsibilities around ensuring that votes are counted and that elections are run and decided properly. By and large, nobody was really thinking about that,” Peter Bondi, Informing Democracy’s managing director, told Nightly. “Now, we’re seeing that trend spread and seeing these actors be emboldened by some of the obstructionist tactics that they were moderately successful with in the last election.”
Informing Democracy focused on six swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and identified over 200 current officials “who provoke concern due to anti-democratic tendencies or actions.” That includes 110 state legislators, and 94 local officials with some role in the elections process, including those who oversee the all-important certification of the results.
Perhaps the most concerning among that group are those who looked to stop certification in 2020 or 2022, or advanced misinformation about voting machines — obvious slam-dunk candidates to cause problems in the future.
The report further states — though arguably in less convincing fashion — that officials who voted against things like expanded voting hours in local counties are at risk of sliding down that same anti-democratic slope, arguing they are “obstructing opportunities to vote.”