Monae Johnson, the Republican candidate for South Dakota Secretary of State, doesn’t just deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election; she’s denies that she’s denying the election.
Because of the enormous lie peddled by Donald Trump that the 2020 election was rigged, and because that baseless lie drove the violent insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, and continues to motivate threats of political violence and the corruption of our election system, one of the most important questions we can ask any candidate for political office, especially candidates for secretary of state, county auditor, and other offices in charge of elections, is, “Was the 2020 Presidential election fair and honest? Did Joe Biden legitimately win the 2020 election?”
KELO-TV’s Dan Santella posed that question to the two people running to run South Dakota’s elections. Democratic candidate for Secretary of State Tom Cool gave the correct answer:
Cool said Biden “absolutely” won the 2020 election.
“We’ve had 60-plus court cases have indicated that. There have been a couple of, I would say right-wing sponsored audits of races around the country and nothing has come of those,” Cool told KELOLAND News. “So I don’t really think there’s any basis at all to challenge that. And our own congressional delegation has acknowledged that Joe Biden won the last election … There are no cases of mass voter fraud anywhere that have been proven anywhere” [Eric Mayer and Dan Santella, “Secretary of State Candidate on Biden 2020 Win: “I’m Not Going to Acknowledge That,” KELO-TV, 2022.10.18].
Santella poses the same question to Monae Johnson, and she acts like a vampire asked to drink holy water:
Falsehoods about the 2020 election persist in 2022, so today I asked each South Dakota secretary of state candidate if they acknowledge that Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election. Tom Cool (D) said “absolutely.” Monae Johnson (R) declined to acknowledge this: pic.twitter.com/tU9kAPi3FW
— Dan Santella (@KELODanS) October 18, 2022
Dan Santella: So there’s no ambiguity: you acknowledge that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election?
Monae Johnson: I’m not an election denier, I just, I want to move on. There’s other groups that are looking into that, and, but see the Secretary of State’s office does elections, but they also do business filings, so there’s so many more things that we need to look at.
Dan Santella: Right, right. So, Biden won the 2020 presidential election, legitimately?
Monae Johnson: I know you want me to answer that, but he’s our president right now.
Dan Santella: Okay. Do you acknowledge that he legitimately won in 2020?
Monae Johnson: I don’t want to be an election denier, but I wasn’t behind the scenes, I wasn’t in the office at the time, so.
Dan Santella: Okay. I wanted to give you an opportunity to acknowledge that, if you’d like, that he did win. Do you acknowledge that?
Monae Johnson: I’m not going to acknowledge that, so, thank you [Mayer and Santella, 2022.10.18].
Finally, Johnson makes explicit the signals she’s been sending all along to the Trumpist insurrectionists. Her talk about “election integrity” is code for her unwillingness to acknowledge that the 2020 election was conducted with integrity and produced legitimate results reflecting the will of the people to remove Trump and replace him with Joe Biden.
Monae Johnson will not acknowledge the fact that Joe Biden won the popular and Electoral College votes fairly and squarely in 2020. A person who refuses to acknowledge such basic facts about an election cannot be trusted to count our ballots and reports the results honestly.
Tom Cool easily and without word games acknowledges the facts of the 2020 election. Tom Cool is the only candidate for Secretary of State who can be trusted to count our votes honestly in future elections.
Here’s the full video of KELO-TV’s report:
Monae Johnson is a crazy person, clinging to lies. She and her kind are dangerous for democracy.
WOW! Wake up with Dakota Free Press in your cup. If I didn’t know better I would say I have been Halloween pranked! Scary Stuff.
Darned scary. Vote for Cool!
South Dakota has transitioned from being the nation’s laughing stock to a full blown asylum run by the inmates. The state’s governor is a reactionary cracker. Infrastructure is crumbling. Industrial agriculture is smothering wildlife habitat. Churches are girding for gun violence. Meth has replaced alcohol as the state’s drug of choice. Pierre’s culture of corruption and attacks on kids have ended open government. Native wildlife are being exterminated to make way for disease-ridden domestic livestock and exotic fowl. Jails far outnumber colleges. Bankers continue to enslave landowners and the state’s medical industry triopoly operates without scrutiny.
You wonder how far this nutcase Johnson will go if she gets elected. You probably don’t need to worry about her effing with the electoral college as South Dakota’s votes there is pretty well baked in, but I’d worry about her messing around with down ticket races. I mean, what about her race? If she loses, will she claim some sort of fake “fraud?”
In Wisconsin we have the interesting duplicity of Republican politicians who were legally elected in the same election that they claim massive voter fraud in. I mean these guys are certifiable.
Monae Johnson would be a serious threat if she is willing to violate existing law to support her beliefs. If I am not mistaken the Secretary of State is not a lawmaker, but rather a person charged with following the current election law by implementing it. Refusing to count votes or throwing out valid votes when not authorized by current law would be a crime.
If the actual law still matters and will be enforced, then any threat created by electing Johnson should be relatively harmless, other than the cost and trouble that may be required to hold her accountable and correct any potential illegal actions as Secretary of State. If the law no longer matters then we are in greater danger than that posed by someone claiming not to deny the election while refusing to acknowledge the validity of the 2020 election.
Monae Johnson and her comrades on the extreme white wing of the Republican Party are raising hundreds of millions with their venom.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/19/1129516628/trump-republican-marjorie-taylor-greene-robert-draper-weapons-of-mass-delusion
She’s just a double dancing Argus. Hermes must be called. The pubs are all over themselves on this issue. They can’t get used to the fact that their party has been taken over by the crazies that they let in for years just for their votes. Now they have to talk to the crazies while trying to maintain their normalcy. They only stand for winning, nothing else. Luckily it’s a great situational comedy with odes of tragedy.
She also claims, via her heavy affiliation with Aglow, womben are being used right now by Satan as a weapon of war to hurt God. Satan is using the weaker gender by letting them think they are strong and independent, while deserting her true, God-given post next to her husband. She is stepping out from where she belongs. God wants her waiting by the door for her husband to admire him and cheer him on at all times. Along with being his white womban to produce more God-fearing souls to contribute to destroying democracy and beyond.
Cannot make this up. My friend and I had to read the Aglow handbook a month or so ago when Mr. H first warned us who was running for SOS. It was funny at first. Then it became full-blown jihadist rhetoric. Her club literally preaches that Satan is turning womben into loud, empty, clanging cymbals. Just to undo God’s plan of using womben as a companion for his chosen rulers of his domain. Man. Eeez surprised it doesn’t implicitly say (white) man.
Monae, strictly by the dubious virtue of being in the R column of the ballot, will likely win. She already makes Jasom Gant resemble Winston Churchill by comparison.
All Mammal for Secretary of State
MAGA is a franchise — a pyramid scheme designed by those who would rip the republic apart and replace it with dominionism. Monae Johnson is a cog in that machine.
She’s a nut case and hurts the credibility of the Republican Party. She also drives reasonable people to look for a more reasonable candidate. Mr. Cool is handicapped by lack of funds and the propensity of Republicans to vote a straight ticket. Mr. Cool needs to get what press he can and call a spade a spade. Under heat, I have a feeling Ms. Johnson would melt.
https://buckscountybeacon.com/2022/10/dominionism-is-on-the-ballot-in-november-but-most-voters-have-never-heard-of-it/
Words of Wisdom: If you win Powerball hire two accounting firms. They can then watch each other and report to you on malfeasance.
In a one-party political state like SD the majority should logically want to elect a S.O.S. from the minority party for the same reason. Without any close elections to cheat on what do you think Monae Johnson will get her crooked fingers into? And who will be in Pierre to watch her and report to the Republicans on her shady MAGA activities?
Ms. P.h, fear less, or perhaps not at all. grudznick has operatives who will go to Pierre and be watching Ms. Monae very closely.
Tom Cool is straightforward about his intentions to run free and fair elections and protect the integrity of our ballots. Tom Cool will be a trustworthy public servant.
Monae Johnson is denying the validity of millions of ballots nationwide without a shred of evidence. Her convoluted dodge to a simple question, not to mention her oppressive (yet hidden in her campaign) Aglow agenda, should disqualify her from holding public office.
No worries, grudz. Your elections are 99% none of my business. I got an email yesterday that my County Clerk had mailed out my ballot and it arrived, today. Mail in voting is a near perfect system of voting. I can get on the internet and research any question and any possibility before I cast and mail in my votes. There are lots of new things and ideas on the ballot, this cycle. Elections are entertaining when it’s a two-party game.
Where I live only Republican MAGA’s still vote at the polls on election day.