A 'Stop the Steal' enthusiast could advance in California secretary of state election

When California voters receive their ballots for the June 7 statewide primary election, they will see seven candidates listed for the office of California secretary of state, which is primarily responsible for administering the state's elections.

Two are openly running on "Stop the Steal" platforms and spreading debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. A third retweeted a Twitter thread giving credence to one of disgraced Trump lawyer Sidney Powell's failed "Kraken" lawsuits, but now disavows 2020 election denialism. Two other candidates have minimal experience in politics and have bare-bones campaign infrastructure. A sixth candidate is a Green Party member who wants to triple the size of the Assembly and abolish primary elections. The seventh is incumbent Shirley Weber.

Under California's primary system, the top two finishers in the June 7 primary — regardless of political party — will advance to the general election in November. Weber, the only Democrat on the ballot, is all but guaranteed to finish first and advance to November. Which candidate finishes second is anyone's guess (there has been no public polling on the race, and the California Republican Party has yet to make an endorsement), but there is a very real chance one of the "Stop the Steal" candidates advances.

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Stop-the-Steal-enthusiast-running-17080864.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-CP-Spotlight

Wisconsin Supreme Court adopts GOP-drawn legislative maps

MADISON, Wis. – The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday adopted Republican-drawn maps for the state Legislature, handing the GOP a victory just weeks after initially approving maps drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

The court reversed itself after the U.S. Supreme Court in March said Evers' maps were incorrectly adopted, and came just as candidates were about to begin circulating nominating papers to appear on this year's ballot without being sure of district boundaries.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/wisconsin-supreme-court-adopts-gop-drawn-legislative-maps-84112513

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Rachel Hamm (Republican) and Matthew Cinquanta (No Party Preference) are still casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

Hamm's campaign website touts endorsements from MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn — two prominent election conspiracy theorists — and she has called for an audit of California's presidential election results in 2020 as well as in the Gavin Newsom recall election. Both races were decided by more than 20 percentage points in the Democrats' favor.

According to the Daily Beast, she has also promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory and said of the COVID-19 vaccine, "I saw all the fruits of evil when I saw the mandates, the vaccine, the forcing of the vaccine.”

Cinquanta is a private investigator with a much less visible public profile than Hamm — of all of Weber's challengers, Hamm has the largest social media following and the most high-profile endorsements — but still repeats many of the same talking points regarding 2020.

On his campaign website, Cinquanta writes that he "will find and follow the evidence with an unyielding and unwavering course of action to bring the 2020 Presidential Election into full transparency" and provides links to videos containing conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines.

Cinquanta calls for "AN IMMEDIATE END to Voting Machines by removing ALL voting machines from the State of California to eliminate any concern for election fraud" on his campaign site.