Election denial has staying power even after Trump’s victory • Louisiana Illuminator

President-elect Donald Trump may have quieted down his lies about widespread voter fraud after his victory earlier this month, but the impact of his effort to cast doubt on the integrity of America’s elections lingers.

Although this post-election period has been much calmer than after the 2020 presidential election, there have been isolated outbreaks of Republican candidates borrowing a page from Trump’s book to argue that the unsatisfactory election results were illegitimate.

In Wisconsin, Republican US Senate challenger Eric Hovde spread Unfounded rumors about “last-minute” absentee ballots in Milwaukee, which he said changed the outcome of the race. Although he conceded to incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin nearly two weeks after the election, his rhetoric helped feed a stake in online conspiracy theories. Milwaukee Election Commission disputed his claims, saying they “lack any merit”.

In North Carolina, Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger he told reporters There were fears last week that the vote-counting process for a state Supreme Court seat was rigged for Democrats. Karen Brinson Bell, head of the State Board of Elections, blasted Berger for his comments, saying they could inspire violence.

And in Arizona, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, who spent two years contesting defeat in the 2022 gubernatorial race, did not recognize her loss in the Senate. While she thanked her supporters in a video posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, she stopped short of conceding to Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego.

Republican disinformation campaigns have eroded Americans’ confidence in elections and exposed local election officials to threats and harassment, and some observers worry the GOP’s destructive rhetoric will return the next time they lose.

“We need to reject that rhetoric,” said Jay Young, senior director of voting and democracy for Common Cause, a voting rights group. “There cannot be this continued attack on this institution.”

However, many politicians who either denied the results of the 2020 election or criticized their local voting processes won the election. In Arizona, for example, voters elected state Rep. Justin Heap, a Republican, to lead the election office in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and the critical state’s largest jurisdiction. Heap ran on a platform of “voter confidence” and suggested at a Trump rally, that Maricopa’s election office is a “national laughing stock.”

Trump tapped former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to oversee the US Department of Justice. Bondi, a Republican, served as a lawyer for Trump as he contested the results in 2020. She could use her position as US attorney general to prosecute election officials involved in that election, as Trump promise in an X post in September.

While the rhetoric about the stolen election has been somewhat toned down in GOP ranks since Trump’s victory, conservatives have tried to flip the “election denial” scenario on Democrats in at least one race.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic US Senator Bob Casey refused yield defeat until last Thursday, two weeks after the Associated Press called the race for Republican challenger David McCormick. Casey lost by less than 16,000 votes, less than half a percentage point.

Casey said he wanted to see the results of an automatic recount and various court cases filed on his behalf, but Republicans jumped on his refusal to bow out quickly.

Last week, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who resisted Trump’s push in 2020 to “find” votes after losing the state, criticized Casey for not conceding the Senate race.

“Electoral denialism must end now,” Raffensperger wrote in a statement. “We are a country of laws and principles, not people and personalities. Do your job! Follow the law. Accept the election results or lose the country.”

Even as Republicans have largely toned down their rhetoric this year, some left-leaning social media accounts have repeated a conspiracy theory debunked that Starlink, the Internet provider owned by billionaire and Trump supporter Elon Musk, changed the number of votes.

Those posts, however, are not comparable to GOP election denial, according to the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, which fights strategic disinformation.

“While the claims are similar, the dynamics of leftist rumors are markedly different due to the lack of endorsement or amplification by leftist influencers, candidates or party elites,” the center said. POSTED last week.

Young, of Common Cause, said it’s clear that election misinformation of any kind has a devastating impact on local officials tasked with administering the vote.

Threats to poll workers continued even after election day. Bomb threats were called in to election offices in California, Minnesota, Oregon and other states, forcing evacuations while workers counted ballots.

But that was only part of the onslaught many officials faced over the past four years. Local election officials need resources to strengthen how they fight misinformation and physical attacks, Young said.

“We should do better with them,” he said.

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This report was first published by Statelinepart of the nonprofit news network State Newsroom. It is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains its editorial independence. Contact editor Scott S. Greenberger with questions: (email protected). Watch Stateline on Facebook and X.