How election deniers have infiltrated the race for the White House

In the lead-up to the US election we will be sending a special Harris v Trump edition of our What in the World newsletter every Tuesday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox.

Washington: As the US election approaches with breakneck speed, I’ve been spending a lot of time travelling around the country talking to voters in the battleground states that will ultimately decide whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris wins the White House.

Yesterday I returned home from visiting three such states – Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania – and there’s no doubt the feeling on the ground reflects what the polls say: this is an incredibly tight race, and with four weeks left in the campaign, it’s still anyone’s to lose.

Donald Trump, seen here in Butler, Pennsylvania, and his supporters still claim the 2020 election was stolen, despite evidence to the contrary.Credit: AP

Two things in particular struck me on my travels. The first is the extent to which many Americans still genuinely believe the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump, despite evidence to the contrary.

The second is how Trump and his allies are aggressively sowing doubt about this year’s election, laying the groundwork for a swathe of challenges and potential civil unrest should the former president lose to Harris.

“They’re gonna cheat,” Trump warned supporters at a rally at the weekend. “It’s the only way they’re going to win, and we can’t let that happen. We can’t let it happen again or we’re going to have no country.”

Almost four years since Trump and his allies tried and failed to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory with a string of lawsuits across the country, the Republican National Committee says it is currently involved in more than 120 legal challenges across 26 states.

Abandoned makeshift migrant camps near the US border in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Undocumented migrant crossings have plunged since President Joe Biden’s executive order in June limiting asylum claims.Credit: Bloomberg

They argue the legal campaign will ensure the election is free and fair, but critics say it is designed to provide fodder for further challenges if Trump loses again, and in some cases, it could disenfranchise voters by making it harder to cast a ballot.

In the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, for instance, one of the RNC’s lawsuits involves a failed attempt to stop voters who make a mistake on their mail-in ballots fixing them – a longstanding process known as “curing”.

In Arizona, an advocacy group founded by former Trump immigration adviser Stephen Miller, has filed a lawsuit challenging election procedures in three major counties, alleging that those counties violate numerous state laws and regulations concerning signature verification, voter registration cancellations, and drop boxes.

And in Nevada, one of the Trump campaign’s lawsuits claims that postal votes not received by or on election day must not be counted. (Currently, Nevada law allows for mail-in-ballots postmarked on election day to be accepted and counted if they are received by county election officials within four days.)

Conspiracy theorists Donald Trump and his running mate J.D.Vance, right, with X owner Elon Musk.Credit: Bloomberg

The moves come in the context of an election that some experts believe could be the closest in modern history. Whatever the case, it certainly isn’t helping boost faith in the integrity of the system.

“I personally think he won last time in a landslide,” Pennsylvania resident Julie Tegethoff told me at Trump’s rally in Butler on Saturday – a sentiment I have heard countless times from voters across the country.

“I am just praying constantly that he wins this time because our country is being destroyed.”

Make no mistake, election denial is alive and well in America’s highly decentralised voting system, where state laws and officials regulate most aspects of presidential elections, in contrast to having an overarching federal body such as the Australian Electoral Commission.

According to a new report by the Centre for Media and Democracy, there are at least 239 election deniers actively involved in electoral contests across eight swing states – that is, people who subscribe to the view that the election was stolen, or have refused to certify previous elections, or spread disinformation about “widespread voter fraud”.

Among them are 81 leaders of local Republican organisations; 50 are Republicans running for Congress and some are vying for state executive offices in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico.

But here’s the kicker: according to the group’s study, 102 of those election deniers are currently sitting on state-based election boards that can influence the way the vote is counted and certified.

The Centre’s executive director Arn Pearson reckons that while it’s highly unlikely that these officials or their allies in the US Congress would be able to prevent full certification of the 2024 election results, they are “in a prime position to force litigation and delay what should be a ministerial task while they and their allies whip up false claims of voter fraud, non-citizen voting, and a stolen election”.

“Our democracy’s firewalls held fast in 2020, but election deniers and MAGA extremists have spent the last four years infiltrating election administration and political party positions in order to disrupt and cast doubt on the 2024 election results,” Pearson says.

To that end, the 2024 election isn’t just about what happens when voters head to the polls on November 5. It’s about the chaos and disruption that could take place in the aftermath.

I look forward to bringing you all the action.

What you should know

• While Election Day is on November 5, early voting – by mail and in person – has already begun in about 30 states, including in the so-called “blue wall” battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
• As candidates marked the anniversary of the October 7 attack on Israel – Harris with a memorial tree-planting ceremony at her Washington residence; Trump with a remembrance event in Florida – pro-Palestine protests erupted on the streets of New York.
• Biden has postponed a trip to Germany and the central African country of Angola due to grave concerns about Hurricane Milton, which is heading towards Florida, days after the devastation of Hurricane Helene.

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