It’s happening in some backwater county in a state that doesn’t even have oceanfront property, so how important could it be?

The commission’s members include Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin, who ascribes to unsubstantiated claims that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Griffin was convicted of illegally entering restricted U.S. Capitol grounds — though not the building — amid the riots on Jan. 6, 2021, and is scheduled for sentencing later this month. He acknowledged that the standoff over this primary could delay the outcome of local election races.

While it may not surprise some, I didn’t even know someone founded a group called Cowboys for Trump, given Trump’s preference for gold-plated toilets over cow pies. On the other hand, there’s a fondness for horse manure in common.

“I have huge concerns with these voting machines,” Otero County Commissioner Vickie Marquardt said Monday. “When I certify stuff that I don’t know is right, I feel like I’m being dishonest because in my heart I don’t know if it is right.”

What gave rise to this feeling in Vicki’s heart? Voting machines. Who knows what weird things the commies can do to them over the internet, and isn’t that reason enough for the Otero County Commission to refuse to certify the election results? It’s not that they want to disenfranchise the voters in their county, even though that would be the result of their journey into the abyss, but who knows what evil lurked in the heart of voting machines?

Dominion’s systems also have been unjustifiably attacked since the 2020 election by people who embraced the false belief that the election was stolen from Trump. The company has filed defamation lawsuits in response to incorrect and outrageous claims made by high-profile Trump allies.

That these three deep empaths were on the commission, which served a ministerial function and didn’t necessarily require the brightest of Otero County residents, is bad enough. That they decided not to fulfill their very plain duty, however, created a problem, and the New Mexico secretary of state was constrained by her duty to fix it.

Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Olive’s request came a day after the three-member Otero County commission, in its role as a county canvassing board, voted unanimously against certifying the results of the June 7 primary without raising specific concerns about discrepancies.

The state Supreme Court ordered the Otero County Commission to certify the results by Friday, June 17th, which presents a problem for the Cowboy as that’s the date of his sentencing.

Then again, Heartfelt Vicki laughed at the court’s order, asking whether they’re going to put them “in the pokey?” I wonder if the Cowboy is asking the same question. The irony of all this is that Otero County was deep MAGA territory, which could both explain how these deep thinkers got on the commission and are now doing everything they can to undo the vote of their neighbors.

One of the concerns following the last presidential election was that all the phony grievances of election fraud would give rise to self-fulfilling prophesies of rampant fraud. Where before there was no candidate so dishonorable, so small, petty and fragile that he couldn’t stand the realization that he was a pathetic loser that he would spend months preparing the foundation for a lie and later act upon it, this is no longer the case.

Having planted the seed of baseless conspiracy beliefs, combined with “teaching” how the dishonest might abuse absentee mail-in voting, there was a very real fear that election fraud would become rampant in the future. Indeed, the usual rationalizations, “well they do it so we have to do it too” was pitch perfect for depth of integrity possessed by the unduly passionate, for whom winning “at all costs” was the only thing that mattered.

But just as prosecutors’ offices were targeted by activists to avoid the hard labor of winning over legislatures that make laws, Trumpers have taken charge of such petty ministerial offices as election commissions to try to dictate that elections be run in accordance with their most inexplicable paranoia.

The Otero County commission voted last week to recount ballots from the statewide primary election by hand, remove state-mandated ballot drop boxes that facilitate absentee voting and discontinue the use of Dominion vote tabulation machines in the general election.

On Monday, [Republican County Clerk Robyn] Holmes said those instructions from the county commissions conflict with state and federal election law, and that she would only recount the election by hand under a court order.

Did no one explain to the Otero County commissioners that they don’t get to make up whatever election laws and rules they, in their heart, feel good about? Is that how it works? On the one hand, ignorance of the law may be no excuse, but was likely the only thing that saved the nation from the worst depredations of the Trump administration. If he had a clue how law or government worked, he could have been far more damaging. So it should come as no surprise that those who, in their hearts, adore the man are similarly ignorant.

But what these sort of shenanigans mean is that we’re looking at a future of insanely irrational disruptions, court battles, compulsion by legal force and election chaos at the same time as the potential for election fraud has arisen from essentially non-existent to quite possible. Does this mean elections are over, as they will never be able to satisfy everyone, sufficiently immune from irrational and baseless grievance to be accepted by the nation as they have been until they made Trump cry?

As long as one doesn’t require evidence to support their wild imaginary possibility, and rejects the presumption of regularity in the absence of proof to the contrary, there is no governmental function that can’t be twisted into some nefarious conspiracy, elections included. But can a Republic survive without elections?