Oath Keeper Mark Finchem Would Serve His True Master, Not AZ Voters, as AZ Secretary of State

State Representative from Oro Valley and Candidate for AZ Secretary of State Mark “Oathkeeper” Finchem, wearing his absurd signature cowboy cosplay (he’s from Michigan…), took the stage at the recent Florence, AZ rally, and, at first, cannily and carefully claimed that the “election is proven to be compromised” and “the margin of error exceeds the margin of victory” and other such mealy-mouthed circumlocutions meant to cast doubt upon the 2020 Presidential election in Arizona.

This sort of vague implication is pretty common for Finchem, who, unlike some the other coup plotters, is generally somewhat more careful in his attempts to preserve deniability that he’s an outright election conspiracist. He usually keeps his bat signals on the down-low with his QAnon and election conspiracist endorsements. But the crowd wasn’t warming to his skirting the central issue of the rally, so he went further than he usually goes in public and unequivocally stated, “Donald Trump won.” Finchem did Der Gropenfuhrer’s bidding, and thus demonstrated who holds his true fealty.

Finchem is an election conspiracist, a participant (and perhaps more..?) in the Jan6th insurrection, and a QAnon nut – all of which certainly demonstrate poor judgment and fell intent against our democracy – but by publicly denying the validity of a legitimate and certified election (the very same election which re-elected him and a narrow GOP majority to the State House and Senate, of course), Finchem has disqualified himself from any public office, especially one having anything to do with supervising and certifying our elections. A vote for Finchem is a vote for a coup. Finchem will clearly violate his oath by not signing certification of Democratic wins he doesn’t like as Secretary of State.

Finchem also stated his support for the state legislature (of which he is a voting Member, so it’s safe to say he’s a “Yes” vote) to “set aside and irredeemably flawed election” under the powers of the 10th Amendment. So he also wants to ‘decertify’ the 2020 election, presumably just the federal part that gave AZ’s electoral votes to Biden, and a U.S. Senate seat to Mark Kelly. Blue Meanie posted on this issue today for more context.

So what is going on with this idea of a state’s ‘power’ to ‘decertify’ an election? It is, of course, utter nonsense without law, procedure, precedent, or constitutional basis in either the state or the federal constitution. Their ‘theory’ of the case is that the 10th Amendment reserves certain powers to the states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Samuel Johnson famously quipped that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Well, in American political life, the 10th Amendment is the last refuge of the racist and secessionist. Since the Bill of Rights was adopted, politicians seeking to defend state law conflicts with the federal government have claimed to find justification for the position in the ’emanations and penumbras’ of the 10th Amendment: this is but the latest round of racists, radicals, secessionists, and insurrectionists seeking to justify clawing back powers specifically consigned to the federal government, or seeking novel ways to frustrate and circumvent federal power.

This theory that state legislatures have so-called ‘plenipotentiary’ powers over their elections and thus could, should they choose, claw back, or ‘decertify’ a federal election is not remotely justified by the facts, history, or law. This plenipotentiary theory of elections rests on elision alone. The proponents will claim that Article I, section 4 of the federal Constitution states, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof”, and claim that this language, combined with the ‘reservation’ clause of the 10th Amendment, means they have exclusive and total control of how to conduct elections in their state, including the right to set aside a ‘bad’ election, if they choose, after the fact. However, they conveniently ignore the final clause of Art. I, sect. 4, “but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations”. So, the federal government has the final say over elections should it choose to exercise it, which it has.

Finchem and his fellow rebels are not really a serious about ‘decertifying’ anything, of course. It is flummery meant to inflame and motivate their ignorant and rabid base, and a dishonest attempt to further delegitimize Biden’s Presidency. They may pass some nonsense in the Arizona state legislature if they can scrape together enough idiots to go along, and that will be immediately tied up in litigation and found to be unconstitutional tripe, but in the meantime, and ever after, they will claim that Biden’s election was ‘decertified’ and thus he’s not really a President, and people don’t really have to follow any laws or regulations coming from his Administration. Such a grift wouldn’t have much weight coming from just one state like Arizona, but if they can build momentum and pull this grift in enough states, they will claim to have ‘decertified’ enough states that Biden didn’t really get to the 270 electoral votes needed to become President.

So, in summary, it is not just nonsense, it is dangerous, traitorous, subversive, and mendacious nonsense. And ALL of these Republicans running for state offices and state legislature who spoke at this rally (and no doubt a lot that didn’t) are saying outright that they will vote for and further this utter fraud. They must face the wrath of voters, media, and the legal community alike.

Fear of the legal community’s push back is likely why Mark Finchem vowed in a pre-rally interview to ask the state legislature to “decertify the AZ State Bar Association” for having the temerity to investigate ethics complaints against Arizona lawyers who participated in some of the utterly baseless lawsuits following the 2020 election: he hopes to intimidate lawyers into not denouncing and disciplining future blatant legal grifting by lawyers seeking to defend or justify the frauds of these coup-plotters, election deniers, and poltroons like Mark Finchem and Hennaed Hitler’s terrorist squad of conspiracists in Arizona.