Election deniers celebrate counts — when they win

Nevada Republican Jim Marchant insisted there hadn’t been a legitimate election in his state in more than a decade. All of Nevada’s election winners since 2006, he said on a recent podcast, were “installed by the deep-state cabal.”

But when Marchant won the Republican nomination for Nevada secretary of state last week, he immediately celebrated the victory as legitimate. “I am beyond humbled by the overwhelming support of our campaign. Nevadans made their voices heard,” Marchant declared on social media.

Such inconsistency has become a hallmark of election deniers in Republican primary contests across the U.S. in this year’s midterms. Dozens of GOP candidates who sought former President Donald Trump’s backing in Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and elsewhere have spent months parroting his baseless claims of 2020 election fraud but then declared victory without raising such concerns in their own elections.

Amid such seeming hypocrisy, many Republican candidates are still vowing to pursue a series of election reforms that could make it more difficult to vote — particularly for those who traditionally support Democrats — in the name of election integrity.

Democratic National Committee Chair Jamie Harrison warned that “MAGA Republicans will do anything in their desperate chase for power.” “From undermining our democracy by spreading Trump’s Big Lie, to laying the groundwork to try to cancel votes when they don’t agree

with the outcome, but falling silent if they win, this is today’s Republican Party,” Harrison said.

In Nevada on Tuesday, Marchant was among a slate of election deniers who secured their places on the November ballot without questioning the legitimacy of the results. That’s even as the majority of counties relied upon Dominion voting machines, which continue to be the target of conspiracy theories by Trump

and his allies.

The phenomenon extends well beyond Nevada.

In Pennsylvania, Republican nominee for governor Doug Mastriano spearheaded a state Senate hearing in which witnesses aired false claims about mass voter fraud. But he made no mention of voter fraud as he declared victory in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary for governor last month.

“God is good,” a smiling

Mastriano told cheering supporters.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also ignored questions about his contradictory positions on voter fraud.

Paxton won his fiercely contested primary last month after spending much of the last year championing Trump’s bogus claims of election fraud.

Wong Maye-E / Associated Press 2020 Backers of former President Donald Trump rally at the Clark County Elections Department in North Las Vegas, Nev., in 2020 in support of Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud.