Jump to content

Republican Party efforts to disrupt the 2024 United States presidential election

Add links
Page semi-protected
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Republican Party's efforts to disrupt the 2024 United States presidential election involve a series of coordinated actions intended to influence election outcomes at both federal and state levels. These efforts are characterized by legislative, legal, and administrative strategies that seek to affect voter access, election oversight, and post-election certification processes. This initiative has grown out of widespread claims within certain Republican circles about election integrity, many of which trace back to the 2020 election and assertions of electoral fraud, despite a lack of substantial evidence supporting these allegations.

Key elements of these strategies include attempts to modify voting laws, with a focus on restrictions that could disproportionately impact demographics more likely to vote for the Democratic Party. Additionally, Republican-led states have seen a push to place partisan figures in election oversight positions, which may influence how election laws are interpreted and enforced. There is also a significant legal component, with numerous court cases challenging aspects of the voting process and aiming to set precedents for handling election disputes.

These efforts have sparked intense debate across the political spectrum, with proponents arguing that the measures "are necessary to ensure election security", while critics contend that they could undermine democratic processes by restricting voter access and eroding public trust in election fairness.

Background

Republicans have for decades sought evidence of what they allege is rampant voting fraud.[1] Multiple studies during this time have found that election fraud is extremely rare.[2][3] An election fraud database maintained by the conservative Heritage Foundation showed in 2024 evidence of 1,513 instances of fraud over the preceding 42 years, though many of those instances have been challenged as dubious.[4][5] After Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he falsely asserted the election had been rigged and stolen from him; the false allegations came to be known as his "big lie". Many of his followers developed an election denial movement to advance this false narrative. As of August 2023, a large majority of Republican voters and Republican-leaning independents continued to believe Joe Biden was not legitimately elected in 2020.[6]

In a 1980 speech, conservative Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich said, "I don't want everybody to vote ... our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."[7]

As president, Trump falsely claimed that millions of undocumented migrants illegally voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, depriving him of the popular vote victory.[8][9] As a result, Trump established an election integrity commission in May 2017, but the commission was disbanded several months later, with member Matthew Dunlap, the Maine secretary of state, writing to commission chair Mike Pence and vice chair Kris Kobach that, contrary to public statements by Trump and Kobach, the commission did not find "substantial" voter fraud.[10] Dunlap alleged the true purpose of the commission was to create a pretext to pave the way for policy changes designed to undermine the right to vote. Critics said the commission's intent was to disenfranchise or deter legal voters.[11][12] Kobach, then the Kansas secretary of state, had a history of making false or unsubstantiated allegations of voting fraud to advocate for voting restrictions.[13][14] The commission did not find a single instance of a noncitizen voting.[15]

Conservative news outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax and OANN promoted false election fraud allegations during the weeks following the 2020 election, including conspiracy theories that voting machines had been rigged to favor Biden. Voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic filed defamation lawsuits against those three cable networks, some of their employees and others. Fox News agreed to pay a $787.5 million settlement to Dominion in April 2023 after it was revealed that top on-air personalities and executives knew the allegations were false but continued to promote them anyway.[16][17][18] The 2022 Dinesh D'Souza film 2000 Mules falsely alleged that Democratic Party operatives engaged in an illegal ballot harvesting operation across five swing states during the 2020 election.[19]

By April 2024, dozens of Republicans in four states were under indictment for their alleged involvement in the Trump fake electors plot and related Pence Card conspiracy, parts of wide-ranging efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.[20] Those indicted included Trump and several of his close associates, including Christina Bobb who leads the Republican National Committee "election integrity" legal efforts in the 2024 presidential election.[21] In September 2024, Hanna Rosin published an article about the aftermath of January 6th in the lives of the insurrectionists, which mentions how they have created "a new mythology on the right," which could lead to a new attempt at overturning the election, should Trump lose it.[22][23]

The Justice Department planned to monitor compliance with voting rights laws on Election Day in 27 states.[24]

Activities

Allegations of rigged elections

To sow election doubt, Trump escalated use of "rigged election" and "election interference" statements in advance of the 2024 election compared to the previous two elections—the statements described as part of a "heads I win; tails you cheated" rhetorical strategy.[25]

During the 2024 campaign, Trump often referred to "election integrity" to allude to his continuing claim that the 2020 election was rigged, as well as predictions of future mass election fraud. As he did during the 2020 election cycle, Trump claimed that Democrats would try to rig the 2024 election. Many Republicans are reported to believe that Democratic Party have and continue to engage in systemic election fraud, with some being concerned regarding election integrity. By 2022, Republican politicians, conservative cable news outlets and talk radio echoed the statement of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon that "if Democrats don't cheat, they don't win."[26]

The Heritage Foundation has been closely aligned with the Republican Party since its founding in 1973 and in 2023 published Project 2025, a blueprint for a potential second Trump presidency. In July 2024, Mike Powell, the group's executive director for its Oversight Project said, "as things stand right now, there is a zero percent chance of a free and fair election in the United States of America," adding, "I'm formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election." Heritage released a report predicting without supporting evidence that Biden might try to retain power "by force" if he were to lose in November. Election law expert Rick Hasen remarked, "this is gaslighting and it is dangerous in fanning flames that could lead to potential violence."[27][28][29][30]

The Heritage Oversight Project also produced videos for distribution on social media and conservative media outlets that made false or misleading claims about the extent of noncitizen voting registrations. In one video that was sent viral by an Elon Musk repost, Heritage falsely claimed that 14% of noncitizens in Georgia were registered, concluding, "the integrity of the 2024 election is in great jeopardy." Heritage based their findings on an extrapolation of hidden camera interview responses from seven residents in a Norcross, Georgia apartment complex. State investigators found the seven people had never registered.[31]

During the closing weeks of the campaign, Trump's campaign and its allies revived allegations from 2020 that voting machines were rigged. The claims were widespread on social media and were frequently mentioned in lawsuits filed by Republicans.[32][33] Trump and Elon Musk repeated baseless claims of fraud and "cheating" in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in the days before Election Day.[34]

Seeking vulnerabilities in the election system

The New York Times reported in July 2024 that "the Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system" by systematically searching for vulnerabilities. The effort involves a network of powerful Republican lawyers and activists, many of whom were involved in the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. It involves restricting voting and short-circuiting the certification process should Trump lose. The Republican strategy involves first persuading voters that the election is about to be stolen by Democrats, despite lacking evidence. After the election, if Trump loses, lawyers would attempt to challenge decades of settled law as to how elections are certified. The Times reported the efforts had "been quietly playing out in courts, statehouses and county boards for months, and is concentrated in critical battlegrounds."[35] In October 2024, The Washington Post identified as vulnerabilities leading to a possible attempt at overturning the election's results the following: widespread false information, weeks-long recounts, lawsuits delaying final results, breakdown in certifying results, disruptions at elector meetings, Congress stalling the certification, and, a wild card ("something new could be tried that attorneys and election officials haven’t yet gamed out").[36]

Nebraska is one of two states that does not have a winner-take-all system of awarding electoral college votes, but rather allocates the votes by its three congressional districts. One district contains the Omaha metro area, which can tend to lean Democrat (Obama won the district in 2008, as did Biden in 2020) while the other two are more rural and vote solid Republican. During 2024, some Nebraska Republicans sought to change the state's 1991 law that created its electoral college allocation system to winner-take-all and remove the likely elector for Kamala Harris. The proposal was blocked by Republican state senators, but by September it was revived with pressure brought by Trump, all of the state's Republican representatives, and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham.[37][38][39][40]

Challenging registrations, ballots and certifications

Following Trump's 2020 loss amid his false allegations of fraud, Republican lawmakers initiated a sweeping effort to make voting laws more restrictive in several states across the country and to take control of the administrative management of elections at the state and local level.[41][42][43][44]

By 2023, organizations funded by dark money had met quietly with officials in Republican-controlled states to create an incubator of policies that would restrict ballot access and amplify false claims that fraud is rampant in elections. Led by the Heritage Foundation, the groups include the Honest Elections Project, which is among a network of conservative organizations associated with Leonard Leo, a longtime prominent figure in the Federalist Society.[45]

The Washington Post reported in June 2024 on indications that county-level Republicans in swing states might be preparing to challenge and delay their certifications of voting results in 2024. Such delays might cause a state to miss deadlines that ensure its electoral college votes are counted in Washington on January 6, 2025. In four state elections since 2020, county election officials withheld certifications, citing mistrust in voting machines or ballot errors, though they could not produce evidence of actual voting fraud; the certifications proceeded after state interventions, which included warnings of potential criminal charges. Two Cochise County, Arizona officials were criminally charged for refusing to certify, not because of doubts about Cochise results, but as a protest against other counties voting for Democratic state candidates. Project Democracy found that since 2020 members of state and local election boards had voted against certification more than twenty times in eight states. Voting rights activists were concerned that the continuing false allegations of election fraud since 2020 might lead to social unrest if efforts to delay certifications at the local level were overruled by state officials or courts. The failure of a state to have its electoral college votes counted on January 6 could result in neither presidential candidate reaching the minimum 270 electoral votes, causing the election to be thrown to the House. In that scenario, the election outcome would be determined by a simple majority count of state delegations; Republicans hold a majority in 28 of 50 delegations in the 118th United States Congress. The Guardian confirmed that "experts have been particularly alarmed by efforts to try and halt certification at the local level – something that could cause delay and chaos after the presidential vote in November."[46][47][48][49][50]

By July 2024, conservative groups were systematically challenging large numbers of voter registrations across the country. Many of these efforts were driven by lawsuits, including from the RNC, and activists calling themselves election investigators. The groups' stated rationale was to purge voter rolls of dead people, noncitizens and others ineligible to vote. Several Republican secretaries of state were also examining the rolls themselves. The executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors said many of the challenges ignore or misunderstand the complexity and legal requirements involved in maintaining the rolls. Others said the efforts risked disenfranchising eligible voters and sowing distrust in the election system. The Michigan secretary of state had earlier in the year directed a suburban Detroit clerk to reinstate about 1,000 registrations of eligible voters that had been purged. The New York Times reported, "it is difficult to know precisely how many voters have been dropped from the rolls as a result of the campaign — and even harder to determine how many were dropped in error."[51][52]

Cleta Mitchell speaking at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference

Republican elections activist Cleta Mitchell has said, "the only way [Democrats] win is to cheat." She was a key figure in Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, participating in the January 2021 Trump–Raffensperger phone call that attempted to change the certified 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.[53] That year, in association with the RNC, she launched the Election Integrity Network (EIN) to recruit, train and deploy election deniers as poll workers in eight key states for the 2024 presidential election. In recordings of spring 2022 organizing meetings obtained by Politico, RNC National Election Integrity Director Josh Findlay, referencing EIN, is heard to tell others that the RNC would support efforts to provide staff, organization and "muscle" in key states.[54][55] The New York Times has reported that the EIN "has done more than any other group to take Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about corruption in the democratic system and turn them into action". Gaining access to over 400 hours of Zoom meetings, The Times reported that EIN had closely coordinated with the RNC, four Republican secretaries of state, and a dozen state legislatures. The group was funded by multiple Republican megadonors associated with Trump, and had successfully spread conspiracy theories about voting with several right-wing media outlets and had installed activists on election boards and thousands as poll monitors and workers.[56]

The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) is a bipartisan nonprofit that helps elections officials in some 30 states manage their registration rolls with the use of software to maintain election integrity. In 2022, ERIC faced criticism from election deniers and right-wing media after the far-right blog The Gateway Pundit published a series of stories falsely suggesting it is part of a left-wing election conspiracy funded by George Soros to register Democrats. Several Republican-controlled states soon severed their association with ERIC.[57][58][59] Members of the EIN had lobbied to have the system removed, and their activism was publicized by The Gateway Pundit and other right-wing media outlets.[56] To supplant ERIC, Mitchell led an effort to deploy the EagleAI NETwork election software in the 2024 presidential election. NBC News reported in August 2023 that "election experts and voting rights advocates warn that an activist-led strategy risks overwhelming election workers with reports of problem registrations generated by amateurs using unreliable data. And those reports may, in turn, intimidate voters or require them to jump through hoops to maintain their voting rights." After months of testing, by July 2024 some conservative activists found the EagleAI system was unreliable.[60][61] The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law has called EagleAI "a vehicle to disenfranchise voters and spread disinformation."[62]

The Associated Press reported in June 2024 that EagleAI "is funded and used by supporters of Trump, some of whom worked to overturn the 2020 vote, and entwined with the Republican's campaign." AP reported EagleAI was pursuing deployment in several states, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada and Ohio. During an internal meeting about the system, Cleta Mitchell said, "The left will hate this — hate this. But we love it." Despite its name, the software does not employ artificial intelligence, and though it is pronounced "eagle eye," its creator denied it was named after Operation Eagle Eye, a 1960s Republican Party voter suppression effort.[63][64]

Julie Adams, an EIN regional coordinator, sits on the Fulton County, Georgia elections board and has promoted the use of EagleAI in Georgia. In May 2024, she abstained from certifying the recent county primary results, though no issues of error or misconduct had been raised. State law says that election boards "shall" certify elections if no problems were identified; the four other board members voted to certify. Adams started a lawsuit, backed by the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute (AFPI), seeking a court ruling to grant election board members more discretion in certifications. Congresswoman and Georgia Democratic Party chair Nikema Williams alleged that Adams was attempting to set the stage to block certification of results in the November presidential election. Fulton is the most populous county in Georgia with a plurality of Black residents.[65][66][67] A Fulton County superior court judge ruled against Adams in October 2024, finding that her actions were unconstitutional and violated state law.[68] The legal arm of AFPI was led by former Florida attorney general and Trump attorney Pam Bondi who filed voting lawsuits in battleground states.[69]

In August 2024, the Trump-aligned majority of the Georgia State Election Board approved a new rule allowing county election boards, before certifying their election results, to conduct a "reasonable inquiry" to verify the results are "a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election;" another vote days later required that county election officials be given "all election related documentation" before certification. Opponents asserted the new rules violated state law and more than a century of state court precedent, and might lead to post-election delays or rejections of certifications in an important swing state. During a campaign rally three days before the board vote, Trump called out by name the three board members who later approved the rule, describing them as "pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory." One of them was in the rally audience and stood for recognition of Trump's praise. On August 26, Republican Georgia governor Brian Kemp said he had asked Republican Georgia attorney general Chris Carr if the governor had the authority to remove election board members, citing ethics concerns expressed by some. That same day, national and state Democrats filed a suit alleging the rules changes were illegal and would create chaos. The board majority also approved a rule in September requiring all counties to hand-count their ballots for comparison to machine counts, which critics said might cause errors and confusion while also disrupting the custody of ballots, which typically remain sealed unless a recount is demanded in a challenged election. The recounts could also significantly delay the reporting of election results.[70] In October 2024, a Fulton County superior court judge temporarily blocked the board's hand counting rule, finding it was "too much, too late" to implement in the 2024 election.[71] The next day, another Fulton County superior court judge found that seven new rules established by the State Election Board were "illegal, unconstitutional and void," ordering the Board to inform all state and local election officials that the rules were to be disregarded.[72] An appeal of the latter ruling by the Republican National Committee was unanimously rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court days later.[73]

Catherine Engelbrecht

After joining the Tea Party movement of the Republican Party, Catherine Engelbrecht founded True the Vote in 2010, seeking to expose voting fraud. The organization has long promoted debunked election fraud theories. She and her collaborator Gregg Phillips provided the source information for the 2022 Dinesh D'Souza film 2000 Mules that falsely alleged a five-state Democratic voting fraud operation in 2020. In response to a state lawsuit, in February 2024 True the Vote admitted in a court filing that it had no evidence to support its voting fraud claims in Georgia. Phillips originated the false allegation that millions of noncitizens voted in the 2016 presidential election. For the 2024 election, they introduced IV3, a software program which they claim compares U.S. Postal Service information to voter rolls so that anyone can challenge registrations. A Wired examination found the system unreliable, though Phillips said an updated version was rolling out that has close to "100 billion data elements about every single voter in the United States." The America Project, founded in 2021 by Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne, said it would roll out "state-of-the-art election tools" that would include artificial intelligence technology.[74][75][76][77][78][79]

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington obtained months of emails among elections officials in at least five Georgia counties calling themselves the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition. The Guardian reported the communications included a "who's who of Georgia election denialists" who were "coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November's election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement." Some officials had ties to national groups like Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network led by Cleta Mitchell.[80]

By October 2024, Republicans were filing lawsuits in battleground states alleging potential fraud to challenge mail-in ballots received from American citizens living abroad. They sought to have certain ballots set aside until voter eligibility could be verified. There are about 6.5 million eligible American voters living overseas, including hundreds of thousands of military personnel. The overseas vote was long considered sacrosanct by both parties, historically giving Republicans a voting edge, but more recently that advantage had diminished or swung to Democrats.[81][82] Judges in Michigan and North Carolina rejected RNC suits, ruling they were an "attempt to disenfranchise" voters and had "presented no substantial evidence" of fraud.[83][84]

Republican congressman Scott Perry played a key role among Republican House members in efforts to overturn Biden's election in 2020. He and five other Pennsylvania representatives filed suit in their state asserting that verification of overseas ballots was insufficient to protect the election from foreign interference. Perry said he "joined my colleagues to defend our election against the intrusion and interference of the greatest state sponsor of terrorism in the world: Iran."[85] Pennsylvania federal judge Christopher Conner dismissed the suit in October 2024, citing its "phantom fears of foreign malfeasance."[86]

Allegations of noncitizens voting

See also: Electoral fraud in the United States § Noncitizen voting

A surge of migrants crossed the southern United States border beginning in 2021 during the COVID 19 pandemic. Donald Trump and many of his allies have alleged the Joe Biden administration was intentionally welcoming migrants into the country so they could register and vote for Democratic candidates. Cleta Mitchell was instrumental in spreading this conspiracy theory nationwide by hosting Zoom calls advising volunteers to spread it. Many volunteers repeated rumors and conspiracies that NGOs aligned with Democrats were registering migrants to vote. Fox News host Maria Bartiromo told her X followers that a friend of a friend told her they had seen tables set up outside Texas DMV offices to register migrants, though a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman said "none of it is true." Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and organizations such as Tea Party Patriots and the Election Transparency Initiative, the latter led by former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, also advanced these false narratives. Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center, said during an August congressional hearing that he believed the false narratives were created "to set the stage for undermining the legitimacy of the 2024 election this year. The Big Lie is being pre-deployed."[87] Lies about noncitizen voting have become the main focus of election denialism ahead of the 2024 election, which some experts say have been used to intimidate and suppress voters while laying the groundwork to try and overturn the election again, should Trump lose.[88]

The New York Times reported in September 2024 that "the notion that [noncitizens] will flood the polls — and vote overwhelmingly for Democrats — is animating a sprawling network of Republicans who mobilized around" Trump after he claimed the 2020 election was rigged, and "the false theories about widespread noncitizen voting could be used to dispute the outcome again." The Heritage Foundation was particularly instrumental in spreading the false narrative.[89][90]

Appearing with Trump in April 2024, House Speaker Mike Johnson baselessly suggested "potentially hundreds of thousands of votes" might be cast by undocumented migrants; as president, Trump falsely asserted that millions of votes cast by undocumented migrants had deprived him of a popular vote victory in the 2016 election. States have found very few noncitizens on their voting rolls, and in the extremely rare instances of votes cast by noncitizens, they are legal immigrants who are often mistaken that they have a right to vote.[91] An April 2024 Cato Institute review of the Heritage Foundation election fraud database found 85 irregularities involving noncitizens over the preceding 22 years.[92][93][94]

Elon Musk, owner of X, has used his account with 197 million followers to post false or misleading information about the election, notably the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, contending Democrats are intentionally "importing" undocumented migrants to vote. In one case, Musk reposted a false claim that as many as two million noncitizens had been registered to vote in three states. Analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that during the first seven months of 2024, fifty false or misleading Musk posts about the election generated 1.2 billion views; independent fact-checkers debunked the posts, though the Community Notes user-generated fact check feature on X did not note them. Musk endorsed Trump in July 2024.[95][96]

Monitoring of polling places in Democratic districts

Politico reported in June 2022 that the Republican National Committee (RNC) sought to deploy an "army" of poll workers and attorneys in swing states who could refer what they deemed questionable ballots in Democratic voting precincts to a network of friendly district attorneys to challenge. In April 2024, RNC co-chair Lara Trump said the party had the ability to install poll workers who could handle ballots, rather than merely observe polling places. She also said that the 2018 expiration of the 1982 consent decree prohibiting the RNC from intimidation of minority voters "gives us a great ability" in the election. Republicans were recruiting poll watchers in suburbs to deploy in urban areas dominated by Democratic voters. Critics said the RNC plans created a risk that election workers might face harassment and undermine trust in the election process.[97] The Republican governors of several states said that they would not allow the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to send poll monitors to ensure that there are no civil rights violations at polling places.[98]

Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union that hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), wrote election officials in at least three swing states in August 2024 to explain plans to monitor ballot drop boxes. Schlapp wrote the monitoring was intended to encourage rather than discourage voting. Election officials dismissed Schlapp's premise; Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes remarked, "the whole thing is an absurd sham to cover up direct efforts to intimidate voters by a bunch of CPAC-recruited vigilantes."[99]

True the Vote planned to team with sympathetic sheriffs to monitor polling places and drop boxes in Wisconsin. Catherine Engelbrecht said her group was "mainly focused" on Wisconsin "but we do have a scalable program."[100] By 2022, True the Vote and others were seeking cooperation with "constitutional sheriffs" organizations such as Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association and Protect America Now to investigate 2020 election fraud allegations with an eye toward preventing future alleged fraud.[101] Such constitutional sheriffs organizations contend sheriffs are the supreme law enforcement authorities in the nation. The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified such groups as part of an "extreme antigovernment movement" associated with the American militia movement and the sovereign citizen movement.[102][103][104]

Trump's political operation said in April 2024 that it planned to deploy more than 100,000 attorneys and volunteers to polling places across battleground states, with an "election integrity hotline" for poll watchers and voters to report alleged voting irregularities. Trump told a rally audience in December 2023 that they needed to "guard the vote" in Democratic-run cities; at an August 2024 rally, he said he already had enough votes and "our primary focus is not to get out the vote, but to make sure they don't cheat." He had complained that his 2020 campaign was not adequately prepared to challenge his loss in courts; some critics said his 2024 election integrity effort is actually intended to gather allegations to overwhelm the election resolution process should he challenge the 2024 election results. Marc Elias, a Democratic election lawyer who defeated every Trump court challenge after the 2020 election, remarked, "I think they are going to have a massive voter suppression operation and it is going to involve very, very large numbers of people and very, very large numbers of lawyers."[105]

The America Project founded by Flynn and Byrne is staffed by prominent election deniers and funds another project, One More Mission, that seeks to recruit tens of thousands of people with military and law enforcement experience to monitor polling places. The Intercept reported in April 2020 that during a February strategy session attended by conservative donors and activists, Catherine Englebrecht said, "you get some SEALs in those polls and they're going to say, 'No, no, this is what it says. This is how we're going to play this show.' That's what we need. We need people who are unafraid to call it like they see it." Several attendees specifically cited this need for "inner city" and predominantly Native American polling precincts.[106][107]

The National Fraternal Order of Police, representing some 375,000 police officers nationwide, endorsed Trump in September 2024. Addressing the group's board, he urged officers to "watch for voter fraud" because "you can keep it down just by watching, because, believe it or not, they're afraid of that badge." Such police activity might violate multiple state laws and raise concerns of voter intimidation. The next day, Trump posted on social media that, if he were to win, "those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country."[108][109]

As election workers faced threats and harassment, in February 2024 The Washington Post reported it had interviewed more than a dozen election officials around the country who said they were "preparing for the types of disruptions that historically had been more associated with political unrest abroad than American elections." This included planning to quickly debunk misinformation, deescalate conflicts and improve coordination with federal, state and local law enforcement to better respond to harassment, threats and potential violence. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said his office was preparing for worst-case scenarios, saying "we recognize the real and present danger that’s presented by the conspiracy theories and the lies."[110] A May 2024 Reuters/Ipsos poll found some 68% of Americans — 83% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans — said they were concerned that political violence might follow the election. Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Security and Counterterrorism aide to former vice president Mike Pence, remarked that "the potential for anger, division, political violence — all of that groundwork is being laid out again."[111][112]

Ivan Raiklin, a close Michael Flynn associate, addressed an October 2024 Rod of Iron Ministries Freedom Festival, urging attendees to "confront" their state representatives with "evidence of the illegitimate steal" should Trump lose. He told attendees he was planning for a range of scenarios following the election, saying, "I have a plan and strategy for every single component of it. And then January 6 is going to be pretty fun." He added, "We run the elections. We try to play it fair. They steal it, our state legislatures are our final stop to guarantee a checkmate." Raiklin had previously characterized himself as Trump's "Secretary of Retribution" and said he had a prepared a "Deep State Target List' of over 350 people he would go after in a second Trump administration. Raiklin claims to have 80,000 recruits prepared to be deputized by constitutional sheriffs.[113][114]

Asked by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on October 13 whether he was "expecting chaos on Election Day" by "outside agitators" such as migrants or terrorists, Trump replied, "I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within," referencing "radical left lunatics." He added, "It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can't let that happen."[115]

Challenging the legitimacy of Kamala Harris

See also: Withdrawal of Joe Biden from the 2024 United States presidential election

Trump has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of his opponent, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election by falsely claiming she orchestrated a "coup" against Biden in what The Washington Post described as an attempt to delegitimize Harris if she wins and undermine confidence in the result of the 2024 election. It further noted Trump's long insistence "that his political failures are the result of some malevolent force trying to keep him out of power", echoing right-wing conspiracy theories and rhetoric about a deep state.[116]

Blue shift and use of polling to suggest victory

Further information: Blue shift (politics)

Trump has pointed to the known voting phenomenon known as a "blue shift" or "red mirage" to make baseless allegations of voting fraud.[117] Trump has frequently made unfounded claims that he is ahead in the polls and winning in deep blue states such as California, alleging the only reason he loses such states is because of voter fraud. By October 2024, Trump made several rallies in blue states such as at Coachella, California and Madison Square Garden in New York. CNN reported that Trump believes holding rallies in blue states helps "show how deep his support runs across the nation" and also "set the groundwork for Trump to question the election results should Harris win".[118]

In October, The New York Times reported on a number of polls commissioned by right-wing firms, most showing a Trump victory and standing out "amid the hundreds of others indicating a dead heat in the presidential election" and that they were seen as "building a narrative of unstoppable momentum for Mr. Trump". It further said that the polls were "cementing the idea that the only way Mr. Trump can lose to Vice President Kamala Harris is if the election is rigged" and that they "could be held up as evidence of cheating if that victory does not come to pass". The report noted that by October 2020, Republican-aligned pollsters had only released 15 presidential polls in swing states compared to 37 in 2024, and that of the 37 all but seven had Trump in the lead. Several of the polls were also accepted in influencing the polling averages by RealClearPolitics, which were widely shared among Republican circles. The Times also reported on betting markets Polymarket and Kalshi as strongly favoring Trump over Harris, and that part of the surge appeared in part to a small number of individuals betting $30 million on a Trump win, and that Trump and Elon Musk had pointed to the betting markets as evidence of their strength. Other data, including early-voting numbers were also "cited by Trump supporters as further evidence of his impending triumph".[119]

Joshua Dyck of the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts Lowell said that "Republicans are clearly strategically putting polling into the information environment to try to create perceptions that Trump is stronger".[119] The increase in partisan polls were criticized by Simon Rosenberg, who alleged that Republicans were "flooding the zone" to shift polling averages, create media buzz and deflate Democratic enthusiasm. G. Elliott Morris of FiveThirtyEight stated that such low-quality polls would not impact their polling averages, which are weighted by the quality and reputation of the pollster, as did Nate Cohn of The New York Times, who calculated only a small shift in the averages.[120] Polling strategists for both parties criticized seeing the use of polling "weaponized" to decrease faith in the entire system. Republican strategist Mike Madrid stated that "the main reason you float data like that is because you're trying to convince your supporters there's no way Trump can lose — unless it's stolen".[119]

See also

References

  1. ^ Bergengruen, Vera (October 22, 2020). "How Republicans Are Selling the Myth of Rampant Voter Fraud". Time.
  2. ^ Kessler, Glenn (November 1, 2022). "The truth about election fraud: It's rare". The Washington Post.
  3. ^ "Re-examining how and why voter fraud is exceedingly rare in the U.S. ahead of the 2022 midterms". Reuters. June 2, 2022.
  4. ^ "Top Project 2025 architect talks conservative blueprint for Trump second term". MSNBC. video at 7m20s. June 22, 2024.
  5. ^ "Analysis: Heritage Foundation's Database Undermines Claims of Recent Voter Fraud". Brennan Center for Justice. September 8, 2017.
  6. ^ Agiesta, Jennifer; Edwards-Levy, Ariel (August 3, 2023). "CNN Poll: Percentage of Republicans who think Biden's 2020 win was illegitimate ticks back up near 70%". CNN. Archived from the original on September 15, 2023. Retrieved September 21, 2023.
  7. ^ Malone, Clare (June 24, 2020). "The Republican Choice". 538. Archived from the original on September 30, 2023. Retrieved September 21, 2023. Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, said in a speech in 1980: "I don't want everybody to vote ... our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
  8. ^ Thomas, Ken; Werner, Erica (January 23, 2017). "Trump wrongly blames fraud for loss of popular vote". Associated Press.
  9. ^ Kilgore, Ed (2019-11-14). "Bevin Concedes After Republicans Decline to Help Him Steal the Election". Intelligencer. Archived from the original on October 28, 2023. Retrieved 2023-10-28.
  10. ^ Williams, Joseph (January 10, 2018). "Trump Panel Finds No Voter Fraud". U.S. News & World Report. U.S. News & World Report. Archived from the original on October 11, 2021. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
  11. ^ Horwitz, Sari. "Trump's voter commission hasn't even met — and it's already off to a rough start". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 19, 2017.
  12. ^ Foran, Clare (August 4, 2018). "Trump voting commission had no evidence of widespread voter fraud, former member says". CNN. Archived from the original on September 29, 2023. Retrieved September 21, 2023.
  13. ^ Horwitz, Sari (April 6, 2016). "The conservative gladiator from Kansas behind restrictive voting laws". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on May 29, 2023. Retrieved September 21, 2023.
  14. ^ Foran, Clare (April 19, 2018). "Kris Kobach found in contempt of court by federal judge". CNN.
  15. ^ Riccardi, Nicholas (April 12, 2024). "Noncitizen voting isn't an issue in federal elections, regardless of conspiracy theories. Here's why". Associated Press.
  16. ^ Jeremy W. Peters; Katie Robertson (February 16, 2023). "Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Election Fraud Claims. 'Crazy Stuff.'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 19, 2023. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  17. ^ Roose, Kevin (November 12, 2020). "Newsmax courts Fox News viewers with election denialism". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  18. ^ Falconer, Rebecca (April 17, 2024). "Smartmatic and OANN settle 2020 election defamation lawsuit". Axios.
  19. ^ Bensinger, Ken (May 31, 2024). "'2,000 Mules' Producer Apologizes to Man Depicted Committing Election Fraud". The New York Times.
  20. ^ Woodruff Swan, Betsy; Cheney, Kyle (May 11, 2024). "Felons or dupes? Treatment of Trump's fake electors has varied wildly by state". Politico.
  21. ^ Cohen, Marshall (July 9, 2024). "Indicted RNC 'election integrity' official accused of dodging deposition in 2020 election defamation case". CNN.
  22. ^ Hanna Rosin (September 16, 2024). "The Insurrectionists Next Door. Ashli Babbitt's mother and the wife of a notorious January 6 rioter are at the center of a new mythology on the right. They are also my neighbors". The Atlantic. The Atlantic. Retrieved October 15, 2024. (...) Our neighbors, it turned out, are hallowed J6 martyrs whose mere existence inspires men to say they will fight and even die for the rightful restoration of Donald Trump to office. (...) In January 2023, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene gave Micki a shout-out at a meeting of the House Oversight Committee, saying that Micki's daughter had been "murdered" and "there's never been a trial." Representative Barry Loudermilk praised Micki's work on behalf of J6ers. Representative Matt Gaetz showed up at the vigil one night, apologizing to those suffering inside. And in September 2022, Trump called in to the vigil: "It was so horrible, what happened to her. That that man shot Ashli is a disgrace … What they're doing here, it's a disgrace." (...) In mid-July, I went to visit Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland. One thing I learned from reading his 2022 book, Unthinkable, was that the revisionist history of January 6 began on January 6, when the representatives were called back to the House floor to certify the election. "I remember it so clearly," he told me. Matt Gaetz rose and said something kind about Raskin, which touched him. And then Gaetz changed his tone and said he was hearing "pretty compelling evidence" that some of the violent people who'd breached the Capitol were not Trump supporters but members of antifa. He was saying this to his colleagues in Congress, who just hours earlier had seen the mob with their own eyes, who'd just had to barricade the doors of their offices against rioters brimming with rage and carrying Confederate flags and makeshift gallows and other inflammatory, insurrectionist iconography and yelling "Stop the Steal!" Raskin could already see where this was heading: January 6 was going to be folded into the Big Lie that Trump had won the 2020 election. (...) In his book, Raskin refers to Trump's Big Lie as "the new-and-improved Lost Cause myth." In less than four years, January 6 has gone from a horror that even many hard-core MAGA supporters, and Trump himself, felt politically compelled to distance themselves from … to being an event that Trump makes central to his political message. January 6 has taken on sacred power; for many, like Brandon Fellows, it was the crucible that gave their lives meaning. It is the furnace that still fuels the Big Lie.
    Dozens of people who participated in the "Stop the Steal" rally, including some who ended up serving time for crimes committed on January 6, have run for political office—federal, state, and local. I have yet to encounter one who shies away from their actions on that day. (...)
  23. ^ Katy Tur, Hanna Rosin (September 16, 2024). What would happen if Trump loses again? Inside the post-Jan 6 movement (Internet video). MSNBC. Retrieved October 15, 2024. [Interview to Hanna Rosin]
  24. ^ Buchman, Brandi (2024-10-28). "DOJ To Monitor Over Half Of All States on Election Day". HuffPost. Retrieved 2024-11-02.
  25. ^ Yourish, Karen; Smart, Charlie (May 24, 2024). "Trump's Pattern of Sowing Election Doubt Intensifies in 2024". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on May 25, 2024. Retrieved May 25, 2024. Former President Donald J. Trump has baselessly and publicly cast doubt about the fairness of the 2024 election about once a day, on average, since he announced his candidacy for president, according to an analysis by The New York Times ... This rhetorical strategy — heads, I win; tails, you cheated — is a beloved one for Mr. Trump that predates even his time as a presidential candidate ... Long before announcing his candidacy, Mr. Trump and his supporters had been falsely claiming that President Biden was "weaponizing" the Justice Department to target him.
  26. ^ Multiple sources:
  27. ^ Russell, George Fabe (July 17, 2024). "What to know about the Heritage Foundation, main group behind Project 2025 and RNC sponsor". USA Today.
  28. ^ Fields, Gary; Swenson, Ali (July 12, 2024). "Conservative group behind Project 2025 floats conspiracy idea that Biden could retain power by force". Associated Press.
  29. ^ Rutenberg, Jim; Corasaniti, Nick. "Unbowed by Jan. 6 Charges, Republicans Pursue Plans to Contest a Trump Defeat". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 13, 2024.
  30. ^ Barrón-López, Laura; Popat, Shrai; Bennett, Geoff (July 17, 2024). "Fact-checking right-wing claims about election security and noncitizens voting". PBS Newshour.
  31. ^ Bensinger, Ken; Fausset, Richard (September 7, 2024). "Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos About Noncitizen Voters". The New York Times.
  32. ^ Hakim, Danny; Corasaniti, Nick; Berzon, Alexandra (October 23, 2024). "Trump's Allies Revive Debunked Voting Machine Theories". The New York Times.
  33. ^ Thompson, Stuart A. (October 23, 2024). "No, a Voting Machine Did Not 'Flip' a Vote in Georgia". The New York Times.
  34. ^ Durkee, Allison (November 1, 2024). "Pennsylvania Fraud Claims Debunked: Trump And Elon Musk Spreading False Fraud Claims In Battleground State". Forbes. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
  35. ^ Rutenberg, Jim; Corasaniti, Nick. "Unbowed by Jan. 6 Charges, Republicans Pursue Plans to Contest a Trump Defeat". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 13, 2024.
  36. ^ Patrick Marley (October 14, 2024). "How Trump may try to challenge the election results if he loses again. If Harris wins, election officials and experts worry Trump and his supporters will not accept that outcome". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 15, 2024. (...) But vulnerabilities persist. The risks this year will depend on the particulars of the election — and the closeness of the results. Many election officials and experts are worried false narratives could again take off, eroding public trust and leading to chaos, confusion and, in a worst-case scenario, violence. David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said that those who oversee elections in key states are once again bracing to be harassed and threatened for doing their jobs
    "This is not a hypothetical," he said. "This is not fearmongering. This is what happened in 2020 and since, on a widespread scale."
  37. ^ Marley, Patrick; Dawsey, Josh; Scherer, Michael (September 20, 2024). "Trump ramps up push for Nebraska to change electoral vote allocation". The Washington Post.
  38. ^ Marchel Hoff, Maya (September 20, 2024). "Nebraska Republicans may change law that could determine presidential election outcome". USA Today.
  39. ^ Vigdor, Neil; Epstein, Reid J. (September 19, 2024). "Trump's Allies Try to Revive Push to Make Nebraska Winner-Take-All Electorally". The New York Times.
  40. ^ Weisman, Jonathan; Epstein, Reid J. (September 20, 2024). "How One Man's Vote in Nebraska Could Change the Presidential Election". The New York Times.
  41. ^ McCaskill, Nolan D. (March 15, 2021). "After Trump's loss and false fraud claims, GOP eyes voter restrictions across nation". Politico. Archived from the original on March 15, 2021. Retrieved January 17, 2023.
  42. ^ Izaguirre, Anthony; Coronado, Acacia (January 31, 2021). "GOP lawmakers seek tougher voting rules after record turnout". Associated Press. Archived from the original on January 31, 2021. Retrieved January 17, 2023.
  43. ^ Corasaniti, Nick; Berzon, Alexandra (May 8, 2023). "Under the Radar, Right-Wing Push to Tighten Voting Laws Persists". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 20, 2023. Retrieved September 20, 2023.
  44. ^ Riccardi, Nicholas (December 29, 2021). "'Slow-motion insurrection': How GOP seizes election power". Associated Press. Archived from the original on December 31, 2021. Retrieved January 17, 2023.
  45. ^ Pilkington, Ed; Corey, Jamie (April 5, 2023). "Dark money groups push election denialism on US state officials". The Guardian.
  46. ^ Amy Gardner; Patrick Marley; Colby Itkowitz (June 26, 2024). "Trump allies test a new strategy for blocking election results". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on June 27, 2024. Retrieved June 27, 2024.
  47. ^ Levine, Sam (July 17, 2024). "Election denialism front and center at Republican national convention". The Guardian. Experts have been particularly alarmed by efforts to try and halt certification at the local level – something that could cause delay and chaos after the presidential vote in November. But Joe Hoft said after the Gateway Pundit event that instances in which officials didn't certify were "healthy". "We need to have people with courage to stand up in our next election and say, "No I'm not gonna certify it. I don't care if you throw me in prison or threaten me, I'm not going to certify it," he said.
  48. ^ Homans, Charles (November 28, 2022). "G.O.P.-Controlled County in Arizona Holds Up Election Results". The New York Times. In Arizona and Pennsylvania as in most states, elections are run by county governments, which must then certify the results. The act was regarded as little more than a formality until the 2020 election. Since then, local Republican officials aligned with the election denier movement have occasionally tried to use their position to hold up certification. The tactic has become more widespread this year and earned encouragement from Republican candidates and right-wing media personalities.
  49. ^ Corasaniti, Nick (August 6, 2024). "Georgia Board Grants Local Officials New Power Over Certifying Elections". The New York Times.
  50. ^ Riccardi, Nicholas; Cappelletti, Joey (June 6, 2024). "Election certification disputes in a handful of states spark concerns over 2024 presidential contest". Associated Press. In Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, two Republican supervisors who refused to certify the local vote totals said they had no doubt their own county's tally was accurate but were protesting the counts in other counties that gave Democratic candidates for governor, attorney general and secretary of state their victories.
  51. ^ Carr Smyth, Julie (July 15, 2024). "Conservative groups want to clean voter rolls, raising concerns about election integrity". PBS.
  52. ^ Berzon, Alexandra; Corasaniti, Nick (March 6, 2024). "Trump's Allies Ramp Up Campaign Targeting Voter Rolls". The New York Times.
  53. ^ Donohue, Andrew (September 13, 2023). "Trump Lawyer Cleta Mitchell Escaped Georgia Indictment — And Still Leads Election Denial Movement". The Intercept. When a Georgia court unsealed the grand jury report on the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the first name on its recommended indictments was predictable: President Donald Trump. It's the second name on the list that jumped out: Cleta Mitchell. The grand jury recommended charging Mitchell for soliciting election fraud, witness interference, making false statements, and a host of other offenses. As a Trump adviser and election attorney, Mitchell played a central role in the effort to stop the certification of the election in Georgia and beyond. She was one of the principal players on the infamous call in which Trump implored Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find the 11,780 votes he needed to claim victory
  54. ^ Przybyla, Heidi (August 2, 2022). "RNC links up with 'Stop the Steal' advocates to train poll workers". Politico.
  55. ^ Berzon, Alexandra (May 30, 2022). "Lawyer Who Plotted to Overturn Trump Loss Recruits Election Deniers to Watch Over the Vote". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 24, 2022. Retrieved September 21, 2023.
  56. ^ a b Berzon, Alexandra; Corasaniti, Nick; Freedman, Dylan; Nguyen, Duy (October 28, 2024). "Inside the Movement Behind Trump's Election Lies". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  57. ^ Parks, Miles (February 9, 2022). "Right-wing conspiracies have a new target: a tool that fights actual voter fraud". National Public Radio.
  58. ^ Vigdor, Neil (March 7, 2023). "G.O.P. States Abandon Bipartisan Voting Integrity Group, Yielding to Conspiracy Theories". The New York Times.
  59. ^ Parks, Miles (June 7, 2023). "The far right's growing influence and 4 other takeaways from NPR's ERIC investigation". National Public Radio.
  60. ^ Timm, Jane C. (August 17, 2023). "Inside the right's effort to build a voter fraud hunting tool". NBC News.
  61. ^ Timm, Jane C. (July 12, 2024). "Conservative activists find errors in software they hoped would root out voter fraud". NBC News.
  62. ^ Clapman, Alice; Garber, Andrew (September 5, 2023). "A New Antidemocracy Tool". Brennan Center for Justice.
  63. ^ Daniel, Trenton; Jeff Amy (June 28, 2024). "In Georgia, conservatives seek to have voters removed from rolls without official challenges". Associated Press. Retrieved August 13, 2024.
  64. ^ Mansfield, Erin (March 27, 2024). "A Georgia man created a tool to challenge voter registrations. Trump's allies may use it". USA Today.
  65. ^ Amy, Jeff (May 29, 2024). "Election board member in Georgia's Fulton County abstains from certifying primary election". Associated Press.
  66. ^ Chidi, George; Levine, Sam (June 4, 2024). "Republican who refused to certify Georgia primary a member of election denialist group". The Guardian.
  67. ^ "Census 2020 data confirms that Fulton remains Georgia's most populous county". Fulton County. August 13, 2021.
  68. ^ Corasaniti, Nick (15 October 2024). "Local Officials Cannot Refuse to Certify Election Results, Georgia Judge Rules". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 October 2024.
  69. ^ Bensinger, Ken; Fahrenthold, David A. (October 24, 2024). "The Group at the Center of Trump's Planning for a Second Term Is One You Haven't Heard of". The New York Times.
  70. ^ Multiple sources:
  71. ^ "Georgia judge blocks election rule requiring hand counting of ballots". CBS News. October 15, 2024.
  72. ^ Brumback, Kate (October 16, 2024). "Judge invalidates election rules passed by Trump-backed board in Georgia". Associated Press.
  73. ^ Brumback, Kate (October 22, 2024). "Georgia Supreme Court rejects Republican attempt to quickly reinstate invalidated election rules". Associated Press.
  74. ^ Devine, Curt; Abou-Ghazala, Yahya; Lah, Kyung (July 29, 2024). "A half-million records and one app: The group behind a massive effort to 'clean' voter rolls". CNN.
  75. ^ Gilbert, David (April 8, 2024). "Inside the Election Denial Groups Planning to Disrupt November". Wired. As the most consequential presidential election in a generation looms in the United States, get-out-the-vote efforts across the country are more important than ever. But multiple far-right activist groups with ties to former president Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee are mobilizing their supporters in earnest, drawing on one baseline belief: Elections in the US are rigged, and citizens need to do something about it.
  76. ^ Kessler, Glenn. "Donald Trump's bogus claim that millions of people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton". Washington Post. Retrieved January 31, 2017. The whole thing started with a few tweets by Gregg Phillips, a self-described conservative voter fraud specialist, who started making claims even before data on voter history was actually available in most jurisdictions.
  77. ^ Berzon, Alexandra; Corasaniti, Nick (March 6, 2024). "Trump's Allies Ramp Up Campaign Targeting Voter Rolls". The New York Times.
  78. ^ Sommer, Will (October 21, 2022). "Flynn Group Recruits Cops, Vets for 'One More Mission'—to Watch Election Sites". The Daily Beast.
  79. ^ Fang, Lee; Surgey, Nick (April 11, 2020). "Conservative operatives float plan to place retired military, police officers as gop poll watchers on election day". The Intercept.
  80. ^ Glawe, Justin (September 18, 2024). "Network of Georgia election officials strategizing to undermine 2024 result". The Guardian.
  81. ^ Itkowitz, Colby; Gardner, Amy (October 9, 2024). "Republicans challenge legitimacy of overseas votes, including military". The Washington Post.
  82. ^ Sneed, Tierney; Treene, Alayna; Dovere, Edward-Isaac (October 17, 2024). "Overseas voters – now a bloc that could be crucial for Democrats – targeted by GOP lawsuits in battleground states". CNN.
  83. ^ Sneed, Tierney; Cohen, Marshall (October 22, 2024). "Judges reject RNC lawsuits challenging some overseas ballots in Michigan and North Carolina". CNN.
  84. ^ Cole, Devan (October 29, 2024). "North Carolina appeals court rejects RNC request to set aside ballots from overseas voters who never lived in state". CNN. The RNC quickly appealed to the Court of Appeals, making the same request that Smith turned down ... The North Carolina Court of Appeals on Tuesday unanimously rejected a Republican bid to have election officials segregate overseas ballots cast by people who have never resided in the state for additional checks of the voters' eligibility.
  85. ^ Broadwater, Luke; Berzon, Alexandra (October 22, 2024). "Republicans Who Led 2020 Election Denial Now Sowing Doubt in 2024 Votes". The New York Times.
  86. ^ Gerstein, Josh; Cheney, Kyle (October 29, 2024). "Republicans lose back-to-back rulings in swing state lawsuits".
  87. ^ Gilbert, David (September 19, 2024). "Anti-Immigrant Election Deniers Have Turned Their Online Following Into an Army of Activists". Wired.
  88. ^ "'Big lie' 2.0: How Trump's false claims about noncitizens voting lay the groundwork to undermine the election". NBC News. 2024-10-25. Retrieved 2024-10-25.
  89. ^ Berzon, Alexandra (September 5, 2024). "Republicans Seize on False Theories About Immigrant Voting". The New York Times.
  90. ^ Bensinger, Ken; Fausset, Richard (September 7, 2024). "Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos About Noncitizen Voters". The New York Times.
  91. ^ Riccardi, Nicholas (April 12, 2024). "Noncitizen voting isn't an issue in federal elections, regardless of conspiracy theories. Here's why". Associated Press.
  92. ^ Olson, Walter (April 11, 2024). "The Right's Bogus Claims about Noncitizen Voting Fraud". Cato Institute. The Heritage Foundation's much-cited database of voting irregularities, when recently checked, included about 85 cases involving noncitizens since 2002.
  93. ^ Ramirez Uribe, Maria; Sherman, Amy (May 20, 2024). "Mike Johnson's false claim about noncitizens registering to vote at DMV, 'welfare' offices". PolitiFact. President Joe Biden has "welcomed millions and millions of illegal aliens" and "the millions that have been paroled can simply go to their local welfare office or the DMV and register to vote," Johnson said.
  94. ^ Multiple sources:
  95. ^ Ellison, Sarah; Gardner, Amy; Ence Morse, Clara (September 10, 2024). "Elon Musk's misleading election claims reach millions and alarm election officials". The Washington Post.
  96. ^ Robins-Early, Nick (July 19, 2024). "Musk's full-throated backing of Trump is uncharted territory for a tech boss". The Guardian.
  97. ^ Multiple sources:
  98. ^ Mallin, Alexander; Santucci, John; Romero, Laura (October 31, 2024). "Some GOP-led states won't allow federal poll monitors at voting locations, officials say". ABC News. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
  99. ^ Gardner, Amy; Wingett Sanchez, Yvonne (August 23, 2024). "A close race brings fresh fears of election interference by Trump allies". The Washington Post.
  100. ^ Gardner, Amy; Wingett Sanchez, Yvonne (August 23, 2024). "A close race brings fresh fears of election interference by Trump allies". The Washington Post.
  101. ^ Berzon, Alexandra; Corasaniti, Nick (July 25, 2022). "2020 Election Deniers Seek Out Powerful Allies: County Sheriffs". The New York Times.
  102. ^ "Constitutional Sheriffs". Southern Poverty Law Center.
  103. ^ L'heureux, TJ; Washington, Adrienne; Serna Jr., Albert; Shabir, Anisa; Simonelli, Isaac Stone (August 21, 2023). "A right-wing sheriffs group that challenges federal law is gaining acceptance around the country". Associated Press.
  104. ^ Gilbert, David (October 24, 2024). "'Take Back the States': The Far-Right Sheriffs Ready to Disrupt the Election". Wired. For years, sheriffs like Leaf who believe they have unlimited power to interpret and enforce the laws of the land have operated on the fringes. But as the election approaches, they have been increasingly empowered by those close to Trump and are more committed than ever to ensuring a Republican victory up and down the ballot. At all costs. Mack, meanwhile, has been the driving force behind the modern day Constitutional Sheriffs movement. In the last six months, Mack's group has mobilized across the US, building relationships with powerful figures close to Trump, training armed militias, and laying out plans for when Democrats inevitably, in their view, try to steal the election. They're laying the groundwork to challenge the outcome of next month's vote—and recruiting sheriffs to help them assert control if Trump loses.
  105. ^ Multiple sources:
  106. ^ Gilbert, David (April 8, 2024). "Inside the Election Denial Groups Planning to Disrupt November". Wired. As the most consequential presidential election in a generation looms in the United States, get-out-the-vote efforts across the country are more important than ever. But multiple far-right activist groups with ties to former president Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee are mobilizing their supporters in earnest, drawing on one baseline belief: Elections in the US are rigged, and citizens need to do something about it.
  107. ^ Fang, Lee; Surgey, Nick (April 11, 2020). "Conservative operatives float plan to place retired military, police officers as gop poll watchers on election day". The Intercept.
  108. ^ Gold, Michael; Corasaniti, Nick (September 6, 2024). "Trump Urges Police Officers to Watch for Voter Fraud". The New York Times.
  109. ^ Haberman, Maggie (September 7, 2024). "Trump Threatens Lawyers, Donors and Others With Prosecution After Election". The New York Times.
  110. ^ Wingett Sanchez, Yvonne (February 9, 2024). "Election officials go on offense to prevent disruptions of 2024 vote". The Washington Post.
  111. ^ Lange, Jason; Sullivan, Andy (May 23, 2024). "Two-thirds in US fear violence could follow election, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds". Reuters.
  112. ^ Layne, Nathan; Ulmer, Alexandra (May 16, 2024). "Trump, allies are laying the groundwork to contest potential election loss". Reuters.
  113. ^ Homans, Charles; Berzon, Alexandra (October 27, 2024). "Far-Right Figures Escalate Talk of Retribution and Election Subversion". The New York Times.
  114. ^ Meyer, Josh (October 24, 2024). "Trump vows to go after his enemies if elected. Meet two enforcers ready to carry that out". USA Today.
  115. ^ Stracqualursi, Veronica (October 14, 2024). "Trump suggests using military against 'enemy from within' on Election Day". CNN.
  116. ^ Itkowitz, Colby; Allam, Hannah (August 19, 2024). "With false 'coup' claims, Trump primes supporters to challenge a Harris win". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on August 24, 2024. Retrieved August 24, 2024.
  117. ^ Wolf, Zachary B. (October 27, 2024). "What is the 'red mirage' or the 'blue shift' and will it happen this year?". CNN. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  118. ^ Bradner, Eric; Holmes, Kristen; Treene, Alayna (October 12, 2024). "Trump makes blue-state detour with Coachella rally". CNN. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  119. ^ a b c Bensinger, Ken; Rogers, Kaleigh (October 31, 2024). "Why the Right Thinks Trump Is Running Away With the Race". The New York Times. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  120. ^ Sargent, Greg; Tomasky, Michael (October 23, 2024). ""Red Wave" Redux: Are GOP Polls Rigging the Averages in Trump's Favor?". The New Republic. Retrieved October 31, 2024.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)


Further reading

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republican_Party_efforts_to_disrupt_the_2024_United_States_presidential_election&oldid=1256182674"