Republican Wyoming voters on Tuesday handed the GOP Secretary of State nomination – and the office itself effectively starting next year – to Chuck Gray, a hardcore 2020 election conspiracy freak who believes Trump actually won reelection and would never certify a Democrat winning in the state and so on and so forth. So a MAGA election denier really is on the ballot and will win, just like the mainstream media warned you they would. Except of course this is Wyoming and this asshole will, never ever have to refuse to certify a Democrat winning a statewide race.
Like we've said before, the threat of rogue Republican governors secretaries of state refusing to certify the Electoral College vote in 2024 is probably overrated, but not completely out of the question in the swing states. Wisconsin and Nevada would probably be the biggest concerns given the tight gov and Senate races in both. Arizona may have the two loudest MAGA assholes on the ballot – Gov candidate Kari Lake and Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, but poll after poll puts statewide Dems ahead of Republicans there. Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania is another vocal democracy hater, but he's down 14 points against AG Josh Shapiro in a recent poll.
Michigan is virtually a non-starter given the overall GOP shitshow and the abortion ballot measure that is sure to make November a nightmare for Republicans. Ironically the one swing state in which Republicans are best positioned statewide for November is also the one where the incumbent governor, secretary of state, and attorney general are on record as having done the right thing with certifying Biden's election (though they definitely were dicks afterward).
So the whole point in November 2022 is for these scumbags to position themselves for November 2024 and deny Biden or Harris or Newsom their state's electoral votes. It seems unlikely that they'll sweep all six major swing states and even if things go badly for Dems in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada this November that the refusal in 2024 to certify their Electoral College votes it wouldn't be enough to deny a Dem win if the map goes exactly the same as it would have it 2020.
Yes the map in 2024 is extremely unlikely to be the same as it was in 2020, but we're just going with what we have available to us here. The point is that the threat is overrated, but it's far from nothing. There are three states that should be concerning, worth a combined 27 electoral votes, a full tenth of the winning threshold. MAGA Republicans controlling even one would be trouble, as a refusal to certify gives ammo to challenges in other states. If Dem momentum keeps building then all of the would-be election deniers in power will be long forgotten by 2024.
Except for some asshole in Wyoming that no one cares about.
PS: This Chuck Gray chode and his ilk would actually be a problem if we somehow got rid of the Electoral College or – more realistically, but still currently not that realistic – neutralized it with the Popular Interstate Vote compact. A vote for a Dem in Wyoming doesn't mean shit now, but imagine if it did. This asshole is actually perversely an argument in favor of the electoral college, that we need only worry about the gatekeepers in a handful of swing states.
Imagine Chuck Gray suddenly realizing the Dem votes he'd been blithely rubber stamping in past elections would actually count and there would be have nothing to stop him from voiding them by however many it took to help make sure a Republican won the White House.