An ex-professor spreads election myths across the U.S., one town at a time

[mahatmakanejeeves]

NATIONAL

An ex-professor spreads election myths across the U.S., one town at a time

David Clements is traveling the country trying to convince local leaders to withhold certification of election results. If he succeeds, it could cause chaos.

By Annie Gowen
September 8, 2022 at 1:10 p.m. EDT

NELIGH, Neb. — One recent still summer night in this tiny city on the Nebraska prairie, more than 60 people showed up at a senior citizens center to hear attorney David Clements warn of an epidemic of purported election fraud. ... For two hours, Clements — who has the rumpled look of an academic, though he lost his business school professor’s job last fall for refusing to wear a mask in class — spoke of breached voting machines, voter roll manipulation and ballot stuffing that he falsely claims cost former president Donald Trump victory in 2020. The audience, which included a local minister, a bank teller and farmers in their overalls, gasped in horror or whispered “wow” with each new claim. ... “We’ve never experienced a national coup,” he told the crowd, standing before red, white and blue signs strung up alongside a bingo board. “And that’s what we had.”

Clements, who has no formal training or background in election systems, spent months crisscrossing the back roads in his home state of New Mexico in a battered Buick, trying to convince local leaders not to certify election results. His words had an impact: In June, officials in three New Mexico counties where he made his case either delayed or voted against certification of this year’s primary results, even though there was no credible evidence of problems with the vote.

Now, Clements has taken his message nationwide, traveling to small towns in more than a dozen states, with a focus, he said, on places that are “forgotten and abandoned and overlooked.” His crusade to prove that voting systems can’t be trusted has deepened fears among election experts, who say his meritless claims could give Trump allies more fodder to try to disrupt elections in November and beyond. ... Republican primary candidates embracing Trump’s stolen election rhetoric have flourished this year. Clements’s strategy is to target his message locally: to county commissioners and clerks, jobs that are lower profile but that wield an outsize role in administering America’s decentralized election system. If local jurisdictions fail to certify their votes, it could throw the outcome of an election into chaos, raising doubt about the results and giving ammunition to losing candidates who refuse to accept their defeat.

Clements is one among a tightknit circle of Trump supporters who travel the country as self-appointed election fraud evangelists. They embrace the instructions of leaders like former Trump adviser turned podcaster Stephen K. Bannon, who has urged election deniers to run for local races and sign up to be poll workers in what he calls his “precinct-by-precinct” takeover strategy.

{snip}

Magda Jean-Louis and Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Gift Article
https://wapo.st/3BpZiFh

By Annie Gowen
Annie Gowen is a correspondent for The Post's National desk. She was the India bureau chief from 2013-2018. Twitter https://twitter.com/anniegowen

[canuckledragger]

1. These corrupt coup supporters NEVER stop projecting their actions on others, do they?

[dalton99a]

2. Clements REALLY loves Bannon