When the new Arizona attorney general took office last month, she repurposed a unit once exclusively devoted to rooting outelection fraud to focus on voting rights and ballot access.
In North Carolina on Tuesday, theState Board of Elections began proceedings that could end with the removal of a county election officer who had refused to certify the 2022 results even as he acknowledged the lack of evidence of irregularities.
And later this week, a group of secretaries of state will showcase a “Democracy Playbook” that includes stronger protections for election workers and penalties for those who spread misinformation.
These actions and others reflect a growing effort among state election officials, lawmakers and private-sector advocates to push back against the wave of misinformation and mistrust of elections that sprang from former president Donald Trump’s false claim that his 2020 defeat was rigged.
Since that vote more than two years ago, election administrators have regularly found themselves fending off false accusations, baseless lawsuits and violent threats. They have fielded demands that go beyond their official powers — to stop using electronic voting equipment, to hand-count all ballots, to end mail voting or to refuse to certify results. Hundreds have resigned or retired as a result of the pressure and abuse, with some states, including Colorado, reporting that a majority of their county election clerks have turned over since 2018.
Election administrators and their advocates say they are motivated to take action because election denialism does not appear to be going away, even as the evidence has grown — in public polling as well as inthe midterm election results — that most Americans have grown tired of it.
Many of those pushing for change are Democrats emboldened by their victories against Republican election deniers in last year’s elections — yet still concerned that false fraud claims continue to dominate within GOPranks. The unofficial start of the 2024 campaign adds to their urgency, with only a limited window to make changes before the next election cycle begins in earnest….
Advocates say more pushback is crucial because so many leading election deniers appear undaunted by their defeats in November. Arizona’s Kari Lake, despite losing the governor’s race last year with a campaign message focused heavily on false claims of election fraud, is considering a bid for the U.S. Senate next year. In two political speeches in Iowa last week, Lake continued to full-throatedly embrace those claims.
In Michigan later this week, leading election denier Matthew DePerno, who lost his bid for state attorney general last year in a landslide, is running for state GOP chairman — with Trump’s endorsement. “No one is more courageous as a defender of election integrity,” Trump told DePerno supporters at a tele-rally this week. “The fake news likes to say, ‘Oh, the election, you have to look forward, not past.’ No.”
Even instances in which election deniers have become violent have failed to check the rhetoric. In New Mexico, a state legislative candidate and fervent proponent of baseless election fraud allegations who lost his own race by more than 50 points was charged with orchestrating shooting attacks at the homes of four Albuquerque Democrats who refused to entertain his demands that his defeat be reversed. Even after the attacks, few Republicans were willing to publicly consider that stolen-election rhetoric had helped instigate the violence.
The heightened pushback has not come only from public officials. In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections began considering removal of a local election board member after he refused to certify the November 2022 results. The proceeding originated with a complaint from the longtime leader of government watchdog Democracy North Carolina.