# Battleground Election Officials Hub The people who **run, defend, or sought to capture** the election machinery in the seven states that decide presidential elections: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. This is the officeholder layer beneath the KB's election-denial cluster — pair it with [[Stop the Steal]], [[Election Denialism]], [[The Big Lie]], and the [[Stop the Steal Timeline]]. Each state is structured around three roles: the **chief election officer** (who differs by state — an elected Secretary of State, a gubernatorially appointed secretary, a nonpartisan commission administrator, or a partisan-controlled board), the **marquee county officials** who became national flashpoints, and the **denier-challenger slate** who ran for these offices to control the count. Records live in `/People/` (tag `election-administration` or `election-denial`). > **Why the office, not just the person.** The 2022–2026 fight wasn't only over who wins, but over who *certifies* — the "run for the office that counts the votes" strategy ([[Jim Marchant]]'s [[America First]] slate). Its near-uniform defeat in 2022, followed by the 2025 partisan capture of North Carolina's board, are the two poles of this story. ## The structural variation (who actually runs elections) | State | Chief election authority | Current head | |---|---|---| | Arizona | Secretary of State (elected) | [[Adrian Fontes]] (D) | | Georgia | Secretary of State (elected) + State Election Board | [[Brad Raffensperger]] (R) | | Michigan | Secretary of State (elected) | [[Jocelyn Benson]] (D) | | Nevada | Secretary of State (elected) | [[Cisco Aguilar]] (D) | | Pennsylvania | Secretary of the Commonwealth (appointed by governor) | [[Al Schmidt]] (R, app. by Shapiro) | | Wisconsin | Elections Commission (nonpartisan administrator) | [[Meagan Wolfe]] | | North Carolina | State Board of Elections (board-appointed director) | [[Sam Hayes]] (R) | ## By state ### Arizona - **Chief officer:** [[Adrian Fontes]] (SoS, D) — defends administration against the legislature and fraud claims. - **Maricopa County** (2nd-largest U.S. jurisdiction): [[Stephen Richer]] (R, 2021–2025) defended the 2020/2022 counts and won a defamation suit against Kari Lake; [[Justin Heap]] (R, 2025–) unseated him on an election-skeptic platform and is fighting the Board of Supervisors over election control. - **Denier-challenger:** [[Mark Finchem]] — 2022 SoS nominee (defeated), [[Oath Keepers]] member near the Capitol on Jan 6. ### Georgia - **Chief officer:** [[Brad Raffensperger]] (SoS, R) — refused [[Donald Trump]]'s 2020 request to "find 11,780 votes." - **State Election Board:** a MAGA-aligned majority emerged in 2024, praised by Trump by name — a board-level pressure point alongside the SoS. - **Denier-challenger:** [[Jody Hice]] — Trump-endorsed 2022 primary challenger to Raffensperger (defeated). Fulton County election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were the Giuliani-defamation flashpoint. ### Michigan - **Chief officer:** [[Jocelyn Benson]] (SoS, D) — armed protest at her home in Dec 2020; now running for governor in 2026. - **Denier-challenger:** [[Kristina Karamo]] — 2022 SoS nominee (lost by ~14 pts), then ousted state GOP chair. ### Nevada - **Chief officer:** [[Cisco Aguilar]] (SoS, D) — won the 2022 open seat against an election denier. - **Denier-challenger:** [[Jim Marchant]] — 2022 SoS nominee (defeated) and founder of the **America First Secretary of State Coalition**, the multi-state denier slate. **Renominated June 9, 2026** and facing Aguilar again on November 3, 2026. ### Pennsylvania - **Chief officer:** [[Al Schmidt]] (Secretary of the Commonwealth, R, appointed by Gov. Shapiro) — as a Philadelphia commissioner he certified 2020 and rejected fraud claims under threat. - **Denier dimension:** [[Doug Mastriano]] — 2022 gubernatorial nominee (defeated) who would have appointed the secretary who runs PA elections; chartered buses to Jan 6. ### Wisconsin - **Chief officer:** [[Meagan Wolfe]] (WEC administrator, nonpartisan) — survived GOP removal efforts; the state Supreme Court affirmed her tenure in Feb 2025. - **Audit dimension:** [[Michael Gableman]] — ran the discredited, taxpayer-funded 2020 review that found no fraud and ended in his firing. ### North Carolina - **Chief authority:** the **State Board of Elections** — in 2025 the GOP legislature moved appointment power to the Republican State Auditor, flipping the board, which then replaced director [[Karen Brinson Bell]] with [[Sam Hayes]]. The clearest 2025 case of partisan capture of a state's election administration. ## Related - [[State Officials Hub]] — the broader state-executive roster (this is its battleground election-administration deep layer) - [[Stop the Steal]] · [[Election Denialism]] · [[The Big Lie]] · [[Stop the Steal Timeline]] - [[2026 Midterms Hub]] · [[Elected Officials]]