Meet the election deniers on the cusp of controlling U.S. elections

Let's try imagining what the next U.S. presidential election might look like. It's 2024. It's been a bitter, hard-fought campaign. Votes are being counted.

Now consider a scenario where these are the people in charge of administering elections: the people who set rules, issue guidance to poll workers, or confirm the winner.

In Arizona, imagine it's Mark Finchem. He was in Washington during the Jan. 6 insurrection. A member of the Oath Keepers militia, he introduced a bill this year – 597 days after the last election – to cancel Joe Biden's 2020 win.

In Pennsylvania, it's the candidate appointed by a governor who was also there on Jan. 6, and who led Donald Trump's efforts to invalidate the results in his state.

In Michigan, it's Kristina Karamo who on Jan. 6 insisted it must have been left-wing radicals attacking the Capitol. She has since referred to police officers there that day as crisis actors.

In Nevada, it's Jim Marchant who said his state's elections have been illegitimate for two decades and that the winners have been imposed by a deep-state cabal.

In Minnesota, it's Kim Crockett who has called the last presidential vote rigged and who dragged her feet before saying she would accept this year's midterm results

In Wisconsin, imagine there's a governor who still won't say whether he wants to decertify the 2020 presidential election; his party's candidate for elections chief wants him to sign a bill stripping the state's bipartisan elections body of its powers.

Those are the people running as Republican candidates to become secretary of state, a state's chief elections official.

The coming days will determine whether these candidates win office: it depends on outcomes of the Nov. 8 midterm elections. 

If the polls are accurate some of these people, maybe even most, will win, along with more mainstream Republicans as in Ohio and Georgia.

More than 60 per cent of U.S. jurisdictions have an election-denier on the ballot this fall. In pivotal swing states, that could result in election-deniers running elections.

The woman who led Wisconsin's elections commission in 2020 was deluged with threats and abuse and she said she's trying not to be alarmist now.

But it's not easy.