Sheriffs Are Ready To Challenge Election Results

In March of 2024, at the Ahern Luxury Boutique Hotel in Las Vegas, “constitutional sheriffs” like Washington State’s Sheriff Bob Songer and Michigan’s Sheriff Dar Leaf took to a makeshift stage, stood next to the stars and stripes and proclaimed that they were ready to challenge the 2024 presidential election results, using force if necessary.

The event was co-sponsored by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), the largest group of “constitutional sheriffs” in the country. Led by ex-Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, the organization encourages elected county sheriffs to “[take] a stand against unlawful incursions and overreach of government bureaucrats” by refusing to enforce federal and state gun control laws and COVID-related health mandates and, most recently, by investigating alleged instances of “voter fraud.” 

Mack and his followers also believe in a variety of conspiracy theories, including the “Great Replacement Theory,” which posits that Democrats are manipulating immigration to boost their votes, as well as theories about foreign interference in U.S. elections and disproven wild ideas about voting machines. 

The hazy idea that elections are tainted and, therefore, subject to skepticism, has encouraged several sheriffs across the country to open sham voting fraud investigations. Mack has even gone on the road, determined to recruit more sheriffs not just to investigate alleged “voter fraud,” but also to form posses to serve as auxiliary patrol units for ballot boxes and polling locations. As he told Wired this month, “Every sheriff in this country should verify the security and integrity of the voting in their county. Every single one.”

These “constitutional sheriffs” have attracted an array of supporters who are pushing even more aggressive and sometimes violent tactics. In Las Vegas, Mack was backed by a who’s who of the MAGA conspiracy world, people like Mike Lindell, the election-denying CEO of MyPillow and Michael Flynn, Trump’s one-time national security advisor and former three-star general who now spends his time peddling outlandish tales. The line-up also included two Jan. 6 defendants, two disgraced congressmen and a former vaccine-skeptical doctor who served time in prison for fraud.

The point of the spectacle was to present a united front about the salience of voting conspiracy theories and elevate the sheriff as the political figure most likely to listen. In other words, while such sheriff-led sham investigations yielded nothing, this year presents another opportunity for the sheriffs and their supporters to cast a wider net — hence the motley Las Vegas lineup — and hone their tactics.

Sheriff Bob Songer, who has a civilian posse of about 170 supporters, opened with a joke about his baggy pants, railed against COVID health measures like mask-wearing and vaccinations and blamed the state and federal government for overreach before getting to his main topic: the posse. “Community policing is an answer,” he said. A sheriff’s posse, he said, can “observe, document and report” alleged crimes, including potential voter fraud. 

Sheriffs’ belligerent insistence that they will pursue alleged voter fraud generally defies the will of the people they claim to represent.

The benefit of a posse was echoed by Patrick Byrne, another speaker in Las Vegas and the former CEO of Overstock.com. “Well-regulated militia is not a dirty phrase,” he said in a talk focused on the “deep state.” Byrne encouraged sheriffs to “build some kind of surge capacity through auxiliary forces, or alliances with the militias” and to “find the Green Berets” in their county.

Ivan Raiklin, a violence-obsessed friend of Michael Flynn who has given himself the moniker of Trump’s “secretary of retribution,” unsurprisingly picked up on the idea of a “sheriff’s posse” as a way to form quasi-legitimate militias. In July of this year, he gave a “private” presentation to Texas sheriffs in which he argued sheriffs should use geo-located data from social media to justify investigations and “swatting raids.” As Kenneth Hall, a CSPOA superfan sings in “I Back the Sheriff” (sung to the tune of the Bob Marley song): “I back the sheriff/ And I’m serving in his posse.” (In fairness, even Mack has been reluctant to associate with Raiklin.)

Leaf, who has continued to dedicate substantial county resources in his quixotic quest to find voter fraud in a county that has consistently voted Republican, argued that he would not stop, despite being specifically told to stop by many of his constituents, members of the county board and the district attorney. The Michigan sheriff has been in regular contact over the years with a variety of election conspiracy theorists as well as far-right, fringe figures who support armed posses of Christian men. 

In 2022, sheriffs made similar claims, promising to investigate alleged instances of voter fraud. The massive fraud, however, never materialized. This year promises to be much the same. The sheriffs’ belligerent insistence that they will pursue alleged voter fraud generally defies the will of the people they claim to represent. Because the goal is to delegitimize the electoral process, there is no material endpoint. There is even plenty of room for hypocrisy: Dar Leaf, who had a competitive primary election against someone from his own department, smeared his opponent and won the election by releasing a few pages of handwritten notes about an unverified investigation.

Rather than dismissing these sheriffs as fringe figures, however, we should remember that far-right sheriffs have grown in popularity and understand that they are more credible when they lean on their status as mythic figures, entrusted with authority and sound judgment. (The mythic status belies the actual harm sheriffs do; according to one investigation, sheriffs’ deputies kill more people than city police.) 

Militia groups and other election deniers flock to sheriffs for support because sheriffs are actual law enforcement officials who can interrogate community members under threat of arrest, open investigations with the patina of authority and deputize civilians to use deadly force against their neighbors. These renegade men with badges claim democratic authority even as they threaten the fiber of democracy itself.

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Jessica Pishko is an independent journalist and lawyer who focuses on how the criminal justice system and law enforcement intersects with political power. As a contributor to Democracy Docket, Pishko writes about the criminalization of elections and how sheriffs in particular have become a growing threat to democracy.