Vote fraud conspiracy theories driving some candidates for elections offices in WA, elsewhere

Mason County Auditor Paddy McGuire has spent nearly two decades helping run elections, including stints as Oregon deputy secretary of state and at the Department of Defense, ensuring military service members overseas could vote.

For most of that time, public confidence in the accuracy of ballot counts was a given, said McGuire, who has spent the last three-plus years overseeing elections in the conservative leaning rural county in south Puget Sound.

“When I started in this business, election officials were sort of treated like pharmacists, trusted innately,” McGuire said in a recent interview.

But former President Donald Trump’s continuing efforts to sow doubts about his 2020 loss have vastly diminished that trust. Across the country, candidates motivated by Trump’s false assertions of widespread voter fraud are running for office, including positions that oversee elections at the state and local level.