Secretaries of State, an administrative function with very political stakes

Before the interminable vote count in Georgia, which swung the November 2020 presidential election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden, almost no one knew Republican Brad Raffensperger. Even less his function: that of Secretary of State of the State of Georgia… Well, unless you have a good memory. Because before him, his Florida counterpart, Katherine Harris (1999-2002), had also helped to highlight this function with the – controversial – recount of the presidential election of 2000, which saw the victory of George W. Bush against to Democrat Al Gore. But then, who are the Secretaries of State of the States and what are they for?

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  • Organization and supervision of elections

The secretary of state of a state has a distinct function from that of the secretary of state, which is, at the federal level (Secretary of State, in English), the head of diplomacy of the United States. The position exists in 47 of the country’s 50 states. Tuesday, November 8, the voters of twenty-seven of them are called to renew them. Of the positions at stake, thirteen are currently held by Democrats, fourteen by Republicans.

The different missions and powers of the Secretaries of State are defined by the Constitution of each State. In the vast majority of them, however, they have a common responsibility: they control the inscriptions on the electoral lists and are guarantors of the good conduct of the polls, by supervising the counting of the ballots and revealing the winners and the losers. Other common responsibilities include registering businesses, maintaining state records and certifying official documents.

  • An administrative function politically exposed in 2020

The elections for the post of Secretary of State are one of the major issues of the 2022 campaign. November 2020 elections had been rigged and, therefore, that victory had been stolen from him − this is the origin of the movement Stop the Steal (“stop the flight” of the election) which will lead to the invasion of the Capitol by the pro-Trump, on January 6, 2021.

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At the center of Donald Trump’s concerns the day after the election: the count in Georgia, in particular, where he lost by a difference of 11,779 votes. A few days before the attempted insurrection of his supporters, he had thus called Brad Raffensperger to encourage him to modify in his favor the result of the ballot in this State. The recording of the conversation had been given to the washington postthen released.

With this phone call, Donald Trump transformed the perception that Americans had of the function of Secretary of State. Until then, this was not particularly seen as a must have in a career plan: only Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Brian Kemp exercised it before becoming respectively a senator from West Virginia and governor of Georgia. “Historically, these elections had a technocratic side (…), they were almost apolitical, rather than partisan”explained to the news site Axios Kim Rogers, executive director of the Association of Democratic Secretaries of State.

  • Republicans ‘denying’ the election of 2020 candidates in ‘Swing States’

In 2022, the theory of the “big lie” has turned into a campaign program for a string of Republican candidates, underlines the washington post. Some of them seek these positions in Swing States – these undecided states that can rock the presidential election – that the businessman lost two years earlier: Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin.

In 2018, Donald Trump did not campaign for any Republican candidate for secretary of state. stake sign, this time he publicly showed his support for several suitors : Mark Finchem (Arizona), Jim Marchant (Nevada), Kristina Karamo (Michigan), Kim Crockett (Minnesota), Frank LaRose (Ohio), Chuck Gray (Wyoming). He also brought his sponsorship to Doug Mastriano, who is seeking the post of governor of Pennsylvania, a state in which the appointment of secretary of state will return to him. The former president, on the other hand, did not call for a vote for Brad Raffensperger, in Georgia, who is aiming for a new term as secretary of state.

These candidates are also members of the very right-wing America First Secretary of State Coalition (ASSC), which endorsed Donald Trump’s allegations of voter fraud. This one wants take control of the conduct of the presidential election in these key States by advocating in particular for stricter control of voter identification, a ballot taking place over a single day, paper ballots, the elimination of postal voting, etc.

Read the survey: Article reserved for our subscribers Midterms 2022: Republicans Step Up Attack on Mail-In Voting

The existence of this coalition was revealed by Steve Bannon, former adviser to Mr. Trump and figure of the far right, in his podcast “War Room”. He also calls on supporters of the ex-president to get involved in a whole series of decentralized processes, from education to the management of local elections – each state has its own rules –, to challenge them, if necessary. To these threats against democracy is added a fundamental movement: since the start of 2021, twenty states have adopted restrictive election laws that will be in effect during the midterms, according to think tank Brennan Center for Justice.

  • Record sums commensurate with the challenge

The Democrats are not sitting idly by, however. In a video for the movement MoveOn, Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, tried in April to mobilize progressive voters. If Republican “deniers” are elected to the posts of secretaries of state, they will be able to question the result of the 2024 election, if its result was not favorable to Donald Trump, he warns.

According to the organization OpenSecret, a research group on financial flows in American politics, the Democrats have raised more than $31 million (31.3 million euros) for candidates for these positions since January 2021, compared to some $23 million among the republicans. All expenditures related to the 2022 midterm elections, all items combined, are expected to exceed $9.3 billion. In 2018, the overall envelope had reached $7.1 billion.

For his part, Donald Trump, who never recognized his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, once again sang his conspiratorial refrain. 1er November, he said he saw early signs of mail-in voting fraud in Pennsylvania, one of the key states in the midterm elections. Here we go again ! Election rigging! », he wrote on Truth Social, his social network. Under this message, he relayed an article by Just The Newsan activist site claiming that authorities in Pennsylvania sent out hundreds of thousands of ballots to voters whose identity was not “verified”. Regardless of whether these allegations have been immediately reversed.

Different designation modes, one common function

The United States being a federal State, the missions and powers of the Secretaries of State have been defined by the Constitution of each State and vary.

  • In thirty-five states, state secretaries are elected in the general election, usually for a four-year term.
  • In nine states – Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Pennsylvania, Virginia – he is appointed by the governor.
  • In the Mainethe New Hampshire and Tennessee, the Secretary of State is elected by the state legislature, the local Congress, for a term of two years in the two New England states, four years in Tennessee.
  • Alaska, Hawaii and Utah do not have a secretary of state: these functions are exercised by the lieutenant-governor of the state.

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