SHELTON, Wash. - Sixteen candidates for local office circled around the atrium of the municipal building on a recent night in Shelton, a logging town near the southern crook of Puget Sound. One by one, they sat at tables of inquisitive voters for what was dubbed “candidate speed-dating.”

As Auditor Paddy McGuire, a Democrat, navigated the room, he was bombarded with questions from voters, some of whom have spent the past two years marinating in paranoia about the 2020 presidential election. Were there illegal immigrants on the county’s voting rolls? What sort of surveillance was used to make sure the drop boxes where voters can deposit mail ballots are secure? Did he illegally delete election data?

One table ahead was Steve Duenkel, a retired Boeing worker and Republican who is challenging McGuire for the office that oversees elections in Mason County, population 66,000. He told voters that mail-voting, which Washington state has used for decades, was inherently risky and that they couldn’t be certain of who actually wins the election next month until there was further verification, like an audit.

A veteran election official who put off retirement this year because of what he sees as the risk Duenkel’s challenge presents, McGuire is incredulous at the campaign against him.

“It’s just hard, as somebody who grew up, as I said, believing in democratic values, that I’m being challenged by somebody who doesn’t believe that our elections here, locally or nationally, are free and fair,” McGuire said. “Particularly here in Mason County, where his party wins a lot more elections than my party does.”

Election conspiracy theorists such as Duenkel are running for Congress, governor and secretary of state positions that oversee elections in state after state around the country. But an unknown number also are running for one of the 10,000 positions nationwide that administer local elections and oversee the people who actually hand out ballots, tally votes and report results.

There are as many as 1,700 elections this year for those offices, or for positions which then appoint election administrators, according to Democratic strategist Amanda Litman, whose organization is targeting those races. That creates a dizzying patchwork of places where election conspiracy theorists can penetrate the country’s voting system.

“You’re not going to know where the vulnerability will be,” said Litman, whose group Run for Something has announced an $80 million effort over three years to recruit and support Democratic local election officials. “They can come from any direction, in any state.”