Republican voters in Nevada will decide Tuesday whether a vocal proponent of false fraud claims about the 2020 election will become their party’s choice to oversee the 2024 elections in this presidential battleground state.
Jim Marchant, a businessman and former state assemblyman who lost a congressional bid in 2020, is among the better-known candidates seeking the GOP nomination to become Nevada secretary of state. And along with former district judge Richard Scotti, he has won an endorsement from the Nevada Republican Party, boosting his prospects in the primary.
Real-estate developer and former state Sen. Jesse Haw is the best-funded contender in the GOP field after plowing his own money into the race.
In his campaign, Marchant has pledged to overhaul what he calls the “fraudulent election system” in Nevada. He has said he would not have certified President Joe Biden’s more than 33,500-vote victory had he been secretary of state in 2020.
He has talked publicly of a “deep state cabal” that he claims has improperly installed candidates in office for years. And nearly two years ago, he sued unsuccessfully to get a revote after losing by roughly 16,000 votes to Democratic Rep. Steve Horsford in the state’s 4th Congressional District.
Marchant also has organized a coalition of so-called “America First Constitutional Conservative” candidates. Their goals include ending most mail-in voting, expanding voter-identification and promoting the “aggressive” cleanup of voter rolls.
And, more recently, Marchant has lobbied local governments to abandon the use of machines to cast and count votes. He wants to return to hand-counting ballots – a move experts say will cause errors and chaos in future elections.
(As we wrote about recently, commissioners in Nye County, Nevada, took Marchant up on the idea and voted 5-0 to recommend that the county's elected clerk, Sandra "Sam" Merlino, ditch the machines in this year’s elections. The controversy has prompted Merlino, a Republican, to move up the date of her retirement, so that she will not be in office to oversee November’s elections.)
Marchant did not respond to multiple interview requests from CNN.
His rise in recent months – and his effort to elect like-minded election chiefs elsewhere -- has raised alarms among national voting rights activists.
“Marchant’s rhetoric and record make it clear that he’s a dangerous extremist who would work to undermine democratic elections,” Nick Penniman, the CEO of the election watchdog group Issue One Action, said in a statement. "Elections should be run by devoted public servants who want to administer free and fair elections, not rogue partisan activists who would overturn the will of the people.”
