Election conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential race live on in Michigan’s GOP primary

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — This year’s presidential election was going to be it for Sheryl Guy, who was looking forward to retiring after more than four decades working in the clerk’s office in northern Michigan’s Antrim County.

The outcome of Tuesday’s primary could scramble those plans.

Five candidates are competing in the Republican primary to succeed her as the county’s top elections official, a position she has held for the past 12 years. The winner will be favored in the Republican-leaning county in November.

One of those candidates has peddled election conspiracies and been a vocal critic of the elections office since the 2020 presidential election, when Antrim County found itself in the national spotlight as then-President Donald Trump pushed to overturn the results in Michigan and other swing states.

If the election skeptic wins the primary, Guy said she plans to run as a write-in candidate in the general election.

“I fear for the taxpayers and the county becoming part of their agenda,” she said. “I can’t just turn over an office that I have worked in for over 45 years to an election conspiracist.”

The Antrim County race is just one of many across Michigan and other states holding primaries Tuesday. Michigan’s is the latest to feature Republican candidates who have been promoting election conspiracies or been openly skeptical of voting and ballot-counting, despite no evidence of widespread fraud or problems in the nation’s elections.

This year’s primaries have served as a gauge of Republican voters’ enthusiasm for candidates who continue to promote false claims about the 2020 election in a party where a strong majority still believe Democratic President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. Even so, results have been mixed.

This past week, Republican voters in Arizona’s Maricopa County ousted the head of the elections office who had relentlessly defended the legitimacy of the state’s elections and faced years of threats and harassment for doing so. They opted for a state lawmaker who has questioned various aspects of the election system, setting up what is almost certain to be a high-profile general election battle in a county that is a perennial target of election conspiracists.

Earlier this year, a county commissioner in a pivotal political county in another presidential battleground state, Nevada, survived a primary challenge from election conspiracists.

In Michigan, Antrim County is not the only place with election conspiracy theorists on the GOP primary ballot.

Two Republicans who are among a group charged for acting as false presidential electors after the 2020 election are vying to become their party’s candidates — one for a seat in the Michigan House of Representatives and the other for a local clerk position. The county sheriff in southwestern Michigan who has continued to investigate false claims of widespread election fraud from the 2020 election is running for reelection against multiple Republican opponents.

The focus on Antrim County, a Republican-leaning near the resort town of Traverse City, began shortly after the presidential election in 2020 when the county reported a landslide win for Biden.

The problem was attributed to human error, not any issue with voting machines, and the results were quickly corrected to show that Trump won the county.

That did nothing to calm the speculation that something nefarious had taken place. Those who questioned Trump’s loss in Michigan quickly latched on to the reporting error to suggest that voting machines were responsible for widespread fraud, even though there has been no such evidence.

Guy, who said she voted for Trump in 2020, remains a target of unfounded conspiracy theories and personal attacks.

Victoria Bishop, along with her husband Randy, a conservative radio host who has sued Guy, has been a vocal proponent of election conspiracy theories and is now seeking Guy’s position.

Bishop did not respond to phone calls and texts asking for comment. Reached by phone, her husband said she would have no comment. Bishop’s social media pages state that she aims to “restore election integrity to Antrim County.” Among her plans is to hand-count every ballot cast to ensure they match machine results.

Four other candidates are running in the Republican primary, including one Guy has endorsed. If Bishop wins, Guy said she will delay her retirement to run as a write-in in November.

“It’s not just my race. It’s the sheriff’s race. It’s the township races. We’re being infiltrated,” Guy said. “They’re coming in and they’re trying to take over.”

Research has shown that hand-counting of ballots takes more time and is less accurate than machine tabulation.

“Some of these activists are pushing for election procedure changes that actually make elections less secure,” said David Becker, an election law expert and the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research. “Hand counts are less accurate, and importantly, they take more time. And if you take more time, we’ve seen that there are unscrupulous candidates who will use that time in that vacuum to spread lies and potentially violence.”

In southeastern Michigan, Stanley Grot is up for reelection as the Shelby Township clerk, a position that oversees local elections. Grot has been barred from running any elections after being charged last year by the state attorney general for acting as a false elector in 2020 for Trump.

In response to a request for comment on his race and charges, Grot responded, “No comments.”

Another accused false elector, Republican Michele Lundgren, is running unopposed in a primary Tuesday for a seat in the Michigan House of Representatives. She is expected to face House Speaker Joe Tate, a Democrat, in November. Lundgren did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.

Grot’s and Lundgren’s candidacies represent the prominent role those who pushed election falsehoods have in the state Republican Party. Several other Republicans involved in the false elector plot were part of the Michigan delegation that attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.

Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf, who has tried to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election through multiple investigations, is running for reelection and faces several other Republicans. He is one of multiple so called “constitutional sheriffs” who have pushed conspiracies in recent years and believe their power in a county is greater than that of any other official.

Joey Cappelletti, The Associated Press