The editorial board for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch urged the newspaper's readers to vote against election deniers who are continuing to push debunked delusions of election fraud.
"With primary elections swirling all over the country, it’s easy to lose track of what’s happening where. But a recent Washington Post analysis clarifies a troubling pattern: In most of the half-dozen battleground states that will matter most in the 2024 presidential election, the GOP has nominated Trumpian election-deniers to posts that have power over election results. This, more than mayhem in the streets, is how American democracy could fall," the editorial board wrote.
The Postreported, "In the 41 states that have held nominating contests this year, more than half the GOP winners so far — about 250 candidates in 469 contests — have embraced Trump’s false claims about his defeat two years ago, according to a Post analysis of every race for federal and statewide office with power over elections."
GOP secretary of state nominee Kristina Karamo in Michigan and Mark Finchem in Arizona along with gubernatorial hopefuls Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Arizona.
"There isn’t and never was any validity to former President Donald Trump’s continuing claim that he won re-election in 2020 but was robbed of that victory by voter fraud. He lost what may well have been the cleanest, most closely monitored and diligently reviewed election in U.S. history, and he lost by a significant margin. But, like the aspiring autocrat he is, Trump attempted to remain in power anyway — an unprecedented violation of oath for an American president," the Post-Dispatch wrote.
"Had this gang of electoral saboteurs been in office in 2020, America might well have been plunged into a constitutional crisis. This election season, there is no more urgent imperative — none — than ensuring that they and other politicians who side with Trump’s lies and against democracy are kept away from the levers of power," the editorial board wrote.
Read the full editorial.