An inquiry for fictitious electoral fraud has been started by a sheriff in the Johnson Hayden county, which includes suburban Kansas City. This AP News piece by John Hanna and Christina A. Cassidy analyzes his conspiracy-driven motivations. Here is an excerpt:

The sheriff in Kansas’ most populous county says he took it for granted that local elections ran smoothly — until former President Donald Trump lost there in 2020.

Now he’s assigned detectives to investigate what he claims is election fraud, even though there has been no evidence of any widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines in 2020. Calvin Hayden in Johnson County, which covers suburban Kansas City, isn’t the only sheriff in the U.S. to try to carve out a bigger role for their office in investigating elections.

Promoters of baseless conspiracy theories that the last presidential election was stolen from Trump are pushing a dubious theory that county sheriffs can access voting machines and intervene in how elections are run — and also have virtually unchecked.

Read the full article here.