“Key election deniers concede defeat after disputing Trump’s 2020 loss”

WaPo:

Voters in several battleground states have rebuked state-levelcandidates who echoed former president Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential race was rigged, keeping election deniers from positions with power over the certification of future presidential election results.

But dozens of other candidates who denied or questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 vote are projected to win seats in Congress.

At least 143 Republican election deniers running for the U.S. House had won their races as of Wednesday morning, ticking past the 139 House Republicans who objected to the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

And while Democrats are projected to prevail in gubernatorial contests in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, several high-profile races remained too close to call Wednesday morning — notably in Arizona, where Republican firebrand Kari Lake has made denying the 2020 election results a central theme in her campaign for governor.

“Just like yesterday I wasn’t prepared to say that democracy was dead, I’m not prepared to say this morning that the threat from election denialism is completely vanquished,” said Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University who studies U.S. elections. “I don’t think we are ‘out of the woods’ yet by any means.”

The mixed picture for election deniers emerged Wednesday after an Election Day that largely went smoothly, with what experts described as normal hiccups but no systemic problems or violence. Threats of raucous protests and partisan challengers intent on interfering with the process had not materialized, they said. They cautioned that the process will continue for days and could turn tense in close contests.

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