David Whipple took to Facebook days after the 2020 election. His home state of Iowa had voted for Trump, but Whipple kept sharing posts that made false claims about the results in other states, an early sign of the conspiracies that have overtaken GOP politics ever since Joe Biden beat Trump. “Joe admits MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD during brain fart,” Whipple wrote on Nov. 9.
Three years later, Whipple clinched a goal that many election deniers have pursued: He took over the local office that runs elections. The longtime Democratic auditor of Iowa’s Warren County retired this spring before finishing her term, and Whipple, a businessman, was one of two people who applied for the job. The all-GOP board of supervisors appointed him in June. In this role, Whipple was set to oversee voter registration, handle ballots, and process results during next year’s presidential race.
Intent on stopping that from happening, local Democrats collected thousands of signatures in a brief two-week window and forced a special election for auditor. (In Iowa, local vacancies only trigger a special election if there’s such a petition drive.) Although the county located south of Des Moines has zoomed to the right over the last decade—from backing Barack Obama in 2008 to supporting Trump by 17 percentage points in 2020—Democrats still bet that Whipple was out-of-step with most voters there.
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