Bluestem hasn't been quiet about our new Secretary of State Monae Johnson, or one of her hires, Logan Manhart. Thus the South Dakota part of an article by National Democracy Reporter for States Newsroom Zachary Roth, Five election deniers who are controlling state voting systems, published locally on the South Dakota Searchlight, doesn't come as a surprise.
I'm only posting the lede and the South Dakota section of Roth's article, along with related posts we've published over the past year or so about the charming folks now inhabiting the Secretary of State's offices in Pierre.
Please read the entire article at the Searchlight.
Five election deniers who are controlling state voting systems
By Zachary RothAmericans concerned about the health of democracy breathed a sigh of relief when a pack of election deniers in 2022 lost their attempts to control voting in key battleground states — making it unlikely that a rogue state election official could subvert the 2024 presidential election.
Candidates for secretary of state who denied the result of the 2020 presidential race were defeated in all three swing states where they were on the ballot — Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada. And in Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the chief election official, an election-denier gubernatorial candidate also lost.
But while battleground states may have dodged a bullet in their secretary of state races, Alabama, Indiana, South Dakota, and Wyoming all elected deniers — defined as officials who refused to publicly acknowledge the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s victory or backed court cases that could overturn the election. And the governor of Florida, the nation’s third-largest state, appointed a secretary of state who has refused, when asked, to say Biden won the election.
The danger to democracy posed by election deniers shouldn’t be viewed in isolation, democracy advocates say. Numerous election deniers, they note, also were elected to Congress, statewide offices, statehouses, and local election posts around the country — meaning these secretaries of state are part of a network of denialism that last year’s elections failed to extinguish.
“Election-denier secretaries of state absolutely present a risk of election subversion that the public still needs to be aware of and responding to,” said Rachel Homer, counsel for the nonpartisan advocacy organization Protect Democracy. “The risk that the will of the people might not translate into who was actually elected — that’s a threat to democracy.”
Early developments
None of the newly elected secretaries of state appears close to getting passed into law the kind of major voting overhaul that several campaigned on.
But even beyond legislation, the secretaries of state, who in all five states serve as their state’s chief elections officer, can affect access to the ballot and the overall efficiency of the election system. And they have used their short time in office so far to continue baselessly stoking distrust in elections, to hire political allies, and to advance measures that further tighten the rules around voting.
Among the troubling early developments:
- Senior staff with years of election administration experience have resigned or been let go from secretary of state offices in South Dakota and Wyoming. In the former state, a combative “America First” political activist who attended the Jan. 6 protests has been hired. . . .
Monae Johnson, South Dakota
Johnson, a former staffer in the secretary of state’s office, was elected in November after winning the GOP nomination over the incumbent at last year’s convention.
Johnson disputes the denier label, but asked by South Dakota Searchlight during the campaign whether the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, she said: “I’m going to leave that question up to those people that are actually in the fight for it.” Asked in a different interview whether Biden won legitimately, she said: “I’m not going to acknowledge that.”
Johnson has said she doesn’t plan to propose any of her own bills this session, but has promised to fight any measure to allow voters to register online — a popular reform that all but 11 states now offer.
Personnel changes in the office have drawn attention. Johnson removed a number of staff, including the state’s well-regarded elections director, Kia Warne, who had been with the office since 1993. Warne’s replacement, Elaine Jensen, who served as a county elections auditor for 17 years before coming to the secretary of state’s office, also left in January after just a few weeks on the job, said Rachel Soulek, the office’s elections director and spokesperson.
“You learn who’s your friend and who’s not your friend when you do things like this,” Johnson told an interviewer when asked about the turnover. “You learn who you can trust and who you can’t.”
Meanwhile, Johnson has hired as a federal and state elections coordinator Logan Manhart, a 24-year-old “America First” political activist and former Trump campaign staffer who attended the Jan. 6, 2021 protests in Washington, D.C., and later defended attendees as “protesting for a cause we believed in.” (On the evening of Jan. 6, Manhart, who has not been connected with the attack on the Capitol, called the day’s events “disgusting,” adding: “Millions of patriots peaceably assembled, and it was tainted by a reckless few.”)
Manhart ran last year as a Republican for the state legislature, but dropped out after Democrats charged that he was violating South Dakota election law, which requires officeholders to have lived in the state for at least the previous two years.
On Twitter, Manhart has praised “2,000 Mules,” a debunked conspiracist film alleging that the 2020 election was stolen through mass stuffing of vote-by-mail drop boxes. After States Newsroom asked Johnson’s office about Manhart’s tweets, they were set to private.
Berk Ehrmantraut, the executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, called Manhart’s intensely partisan public comments “not appropriate for someone who needs to be impartially conducting elections.”
“Logan has shown nothing but professionalism since joining the office and has assisted every individual who he has worked with,” Soulek told States Newsroom. . . .
The States News Network piece misses a bit of cronyism in Johnson's office. Fortunately Dakota Free Press's Cory Allen Heidelberger caught it in Monae Johnson Hires Lieutenant Governor’s Son to Manage Elections and Pistol Permits.
Related posts
- Jeepers, who knew? SD Scout confirms election denier Manhart's state secretary of state job
- Is election denier Logan Manhart working in South Dakota Secretary of State elections office?
- SD Searchlight: Incoming Secretary of State looks to hand-count ballots, audit each election
- SD Republican Secretary of State candidate: The trouble with Monae Johnson and Jell-O
- Funhouse mirrors? The peculiar GOP endorsed secretary of state candidates in MN & SD
- Westrom wouldn't talk to local reporter about why he attended sketchy election fraud event
- News digest: Manhart pulls out of SD1 race
- Eligibility questioned, Logan Manhart withdraws from South Dakota District 1 House race
- Dakota Free Press post: Manhart voted in Wisconsin in 2021, thus ineligible to run for South Dakota House in 2022
- Manhart candidate integrity questioned: docs from 32CIV22-92; McCleerey vs Barnett
- In SD District One, GOP candidate & operative doesn't want to talk to press about January 6
- Media scrutiny of SD District 1 House Logan Manhart candidate integrity questions continue
Photo: From Manhart's January 1, 2022 tweet, recalling a January 6, 2021 tourist excursion to Washington, DC. While he doubted the election of Joe Biden, he didn't enter and riot inside the U.S. Capitol. He now works in the SD Secretary of State's elections office.
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