Republican officials in key battleground states are moving to assert more control over elections ahead of 2024 — efforts that could disrupt preparations already underway for the presidential contest.
Unlike prior pushes that have focused on poll access and voting requirements, the current focus is on offices or agencies that have oversight of actual elections and that tend to operate in obscurity.
Recently, Republican lawmakers have:
- Tried to oust Wisconsin’s elections chief after years of empowering baseless conspiracies about the 2020 election.
- Remade election boards in North Carolina in a way that could increase stalemates and imperil expansive access to early voting.
- Dismantled the election office in Texas’ largest county after a series of problems there.
Election watchdog groups warn that the moves threaten to further tear down public confidence in a system that has been relentlessly attacked since 2020.
The efforts come as former President Donald Trump, the likely GOP presidential nominee, continues to refuse to accept his 2020 loss — and now faces multiple legal charges over his effort to overturn it. In the aftermath of the 2020 elections, election officials across the country were overwhelmed, grappling with spurious so-called “audits” of the vote that were rooted in conspiracy theories and dealing with targeted harassment campaigns. Some election officials see the latest efforts as a continuation of that.“I do think there is a trend,” said Meagan Wolfe, the executive director of the Wisconsin Elections Commission that Republican lawmakers are trying to fire.
There are “political people,” she said in an interview, who “want to try to get rid of people that are going to stand strong against partisan pressures. That’s certainly what I’m experiencing.”