Former President Donald Trump won Mesa County, Colorado, by 28 points in last fall's election.
In Barry County, Michigan, he won by more than 32 points. And in Lander County, Nevada, his victory was in excess of 61 points.
Yet in each county, Republican officials have sought to further investigate those results and, in some cases, suggested they may not be accurate. That's despite no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election there or elsewhere.
With denial of President Joe Biden's victory at the core of the pro-Trump movement, demands for partisan election investigations styled after the one authorized by Republicans in Arizona — focused in a county Biden won — have proliferated. Now, a push to revisit November's results is underway or being called for in at least nine counties Trump won by more than 24 points.
The trend is symptomatic of the increasingly entrenched idea among the Trump base that elections are rigged and not to be trusted — a lie Trump continues to vigorously promote and which has become a litmus test for GOP officials at all levels of government. A recent CNN poll found that nearly 6-in-10 Republicans say believing this false claim is important to their partisan identity.
Some county officials have taken increasingly irregular steps to probe the prior election while others face pressure at rowdy local government meetings from groups demanding such investigations. Experts say this is another flashing red light for the state of U.S. elections.
The growing trend of unorthodox election reviews "demonstrates that the Big Lie is getting bigger," Jena Griswold, a Democrat who serves as Colorado's secretary of state, told NBC News, referring to Trump's baseless and unceasing claims that massive fraud prevented him from winning a second term. "The threat to democracy is increasing."
The county efforts are happening on a parallel track to partisan reviews launched by or in conjunction with state legislatures in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, reviews that largely stray from typical vote-auditing procedure and have sometimes involved private firms with little relevant experience or expertise. Partially for those reasons, these reviews in solidly red counties have not been immune to skepticism from fellow local GOP officials — including those who run elections.
Ballots from the presidential election, which took place more than 10 months ago, have been counted, certified accurate, and, in many cases, recounted more than once with the same outcome affirmed. Officials in both parties acknowledged the validity of the results, while former Trump administration officials have said that the election was secure and that they could not find evidence of widespread fraud. Trump's lawyers were unable to produce evidence to prove their claims in court.
Still, in Michigan’s Barry County, Sheriff Dar Leaf hired a private investigator he said came recommended by a lawyer on pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell's “Kraken” lawsuit team to help conduct an unusual probe he launched in July. (Powell and other lawyers would later be sanctioned for what a federal judge called a “historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.”)
Leaf, who last year sought to enlist other Michigan sheriffs to seize the Dominion voting machines at the heart of the election conspiracy concocted on the far right, had his office and a private investigator, Michael Lynch, interview a series of township clerks. The Barry County GOP clerk criticized the effort and told the news organization Bridge Michigan that Leaf's team sought to "surprise" the officials.
Leaf, who did not respond to requests for comment, told county commissioners last month he could not provide them with an update on his investigation but said "for the most part" the election was secure.
Ben Geiger, the Republican who chairs the Barry County Board of Commissioners, told NBC News that local officials "are kind of antsy to see" Leaf's probe "wrap up."
"I haven't seen anything to cause me to be concerned about Barry County's election results," Geiger said.
Julie Nakfoor Pratt, a Republican who is the county's prosecuting attorney, said she walked away from a meeting with Leaf and Lynch “thinking, ‘What in the world?’”
“To this day, I haven't received anything more. And I haven't received a charging request. I haven't received requests for anything,” she added.
Asked if she has seen any evidence that would make her question the results of last fall's vote locally, she responded, "Nope."
These reviews can feed into similar efforts at the state level, something elections experts said they found particularly alarming.
