President Donald Trump\u2019s call to \u201cnationalize\u201d elections and continued false claims of fraud are defining races this year for offices that oversee the voting process in key battleground states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democratic candidates for secretary of state in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada have put Trump\u2019s comments and recent actions by his administration \u2014 including lawsuits over state voter rolls and the recent FBI raid of an Atlanta-area election hub \u2014 front and center as part of a broader messaging effort focused on protecting elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the Republicans vying to be these states\u2019 top election officials have largely lined up behind Trump\u2019s aggressive approach and unfounded assertions that the 2020 election was stolen from him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four years ago, with Trump\u2019s efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden still fresh, these normally low-profile secretary of state races garnered national attention, with Democrats arguing that Republicans would be in a position to interfere with the 2024 presidential election if they won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, Democrats are updating their 2022 playbook and warning the stakes are even higher in these contests with Trump back in power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe bad guys are on the inside now,\u201d said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who is up for re-election this November. \u201cYou\u2019ve got various folks who are just flat-out lying about elections, including the president. Now, that hasn\u2019t changed, but now they have high levels of power and high levels of visibility.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fontes\u2019 sole Republican challenger is state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who was on the alternative slate of presidential electors backing Trump in 2020, when Biden won Arizona. Kolodin was also part of efforts to file numerous lawsuits that sought to overturn the 2020 results in Arizona. He has not officially been endorsed by Trump, but on his campaign website he includes a quote from the president calling him \u201cone hell of an attorney.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kolodin didn\u2019t respond to questions from NBC News for this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Georgia, Trump\u2019s election obsession is at the forefront of the secretary of state race following the FBI\u2019s execution of a search warrant at an election hub in Fulton County in search of records related to the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The race to succeed Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger \u2014 who rejected Trump\u2019s plea to \u201cfind\u201d more votes in Georgia after the 2020 election and is now running for governor \u2014 features lively primaries on both sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Democratic race features Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett, who\u2019s been an outspoken critic of Trump and his allies. Barrett made waves last year after refusing to approve two Republican nominees to the county board whom other Democrats had alleged were election deniers. Also running are Penny Brown Reynolds, a former TV judge who also served in the Biden administration, and Adrian Consonery, a voting rights activist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Republican primary is a four-way race, led by Gabriel Sterling \u2014 the chief operating officer in the Georgia secretary of state\u2019s office, who emerged as a public face of the harassment and threats that election officials faced following Trump\u2019s efforts to overturn the 2020 election \u2014 and Vernon Jones, a Trump ally who has consistently backed the president\u2019s false voting claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a brief interview with NBC News, Sterling said his views on protecting elections from Trump, or from anyone else at the federal level, could be summarized in a series of recent posts on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere should never be a Federal takeover of our elections. I will never allow this, regardless of the party of the Administration in power,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIf you want a Secretary of State that will follow the law, uphold the Constitution, defend the right of citizens to vote, and oppose a federal takeover, regardless of party, I\u2019m your candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an interview with NBC News, Jones repeatedly declined to answer whether he agreed with Trump\u2019s comments about wanting to \u201cnationalize\u201d elections. The Constitution gives states the authority to administer and conduct elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy concern is Georgia\u2019s voters. To make sure Georgia voters receive a free, fair and transparent election,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked how he viewed the raid in Fulton County, Jones replied, \u201cIf your house is clean, why would you be concerned about somebody coming inside of it, if it\u2019s clean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are too many questions, and there\u2019s an effort by many to hide or to cover up what the facts are,\u201d added Jones, a former Democratic state legislator who switched parties in 2021. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022 as a Republican, calling himself \u201cthe Black Donald Trump\u201d during the campaign. He\u2019d previously launched a run for governor that year, basing most of his campaign message on the Georgia election being stolen, before quitting to run for Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other Republicans running for Georgia secretary of state this year are state Rep. Tim Fleming and business owner Kelvin King. Both have expressed concerns about the results of the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe should not \u2018nationalize elections.\u2019 Conservatives know what a disaster it would have been to turn over the management of our elections to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or Tim Walz,\u201d King wrote in an email to NBC News, adding that \u201caccountability starts at the state level.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe federal government can set baseline standards without taking over elections,\u201d King wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Michigan, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who faced a torrent of threats for refusing to overturn the 2020 election results after Biden won, is running for governor this year. Democrats vying to succeed her include Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist and Ingham County Clerk Barbara Byrum, who have both framed Trump and his allies as threats to democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Republican candidates include Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini, who has leaned into allegations of noncitizen voting as a major focus of his campaign (Benson\u2019s office says it has debunked those claims), as well as Monica Yatooma, a business owner and Trump supporter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Forlini didn\u2019t respond to questions from NBC News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Responding to questions from NBC News about Trump\u2019s call to nationalize elections, Yatooma wrote, \u201cThere is zero daylight between President Trump and myself on this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in Nevada, Republican Sharron Angle is the only challenger at the moment to Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Angle, a former member of the state Assembly who has run unsuccessfully for statewide office multiple times, was part of a group in Nevada that sued to block the certification of Biden\u2019s 2020 election win in the state, citing allegations of widespread voter fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her campaign website features articles she\u2019s written about election integrity and voter fraud, including one titled \u201cSharron Angle Will Enforce Trump\u2019s Election Integrity Executive Order\u201d \u2014 in which she promises to uphold a Trump edict ordering major election changes, including requiring people to prove their citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others include \u201cElection Fraud, How Much Is Too Much\u201d and \u201cThe Imperative of a Fixed Election Day.\u201d Angle didn\u2019t respond to questions from NBC News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aguilar, for his part, framed the debate over elections as part of a broader battle over civil rights \u2014 and referred to efforts by Attorney General Pam Bondi to connect her quest for unredacted voter rolls to the federal immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat is just absolutely shocking and actually immoral,\u201d he said in an interview Friday. \u201cIt was shocking to me they were conflating the two issues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aguilar also expressed concern about the ramifications for the next presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe know that \u201926 is critical to \u201928. Secretary races are happening in \u201926, we know that secretaries administer elections, and with \u201928 being a consequential presidential election, my strategic thinking and my antenna goes up to say, wait a minute, what\u2019s happening here?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The approach from Republican secretary of state candidates to closely align themselves with Trump\u2019s election views was unsuccessful in swing states four years ago. In Georgia, Raffensperger bested a Trump-picked challenger in the primary, while Fontes, Benson and Aguilar all defeated general election opponents who ran predominantly on disproven election claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo-called election denial is not just alive and well, it\u2019s more powerful than it\u2019s ever been. It\u2019s not embedded across the federal government,\u201d said Joanna Lydgate, the CEO of States United Action, a nonpartisan group that tracks secretary of state and gubernatorial races. \u201cBut in 2026, unlike 2022, Trump has access to all the tools of the federal government at his disposal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe major election threats that we\u2019ve faced in the past are really even more supercharged today,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n