Trump may have initiated the election-truther movement. This movement, once the domain of an angry former president, has now spread to all levels, spreading vague and unspecified claims that future elections are already rigged. This fiction is set to play a major role in the midterm elections. In 2024, it will provide Republican candidates with a rallying cry and prime the electorate to face any future challenges to the GOP's losing races.
Benjamin Ginsberg (an elections lawyer who represented Republican presidential nominees in the past) said that the fever has not subsided. It is actually spreading. People who I knew were rational and principled felt they had to admit that our elections are not reliable. That is because polls have shown that this is the ante for contested Republican primary elections and motivating the base during general elections. California recall results aside, this goes against the principle that leaders shouldn't make accusations that undermine American democracy without credible evidence.
Republicans once considered the myth that Trump won in 2020, but was robbed of the election, a backward-looking concern. Trump's discredited hangers on the Rudy Giulianis and Lin Woods, Mike Lindells, Sidney Powells, and Mike Lindells, were the most prominent supporters of this fantasy, aside from the twice impeached former president. What is driving some party members today is a political grift to appease base voters and discredit results from races not going their way. It's not just that Trump's false allegations regarding the last election have been supported by a large number of Senate and House candidates. They are already making similar claims.
This is a terrible development for democracy," said Trevor Potter, former chair of Federal Election Commission and general counsel to Republican John McCain's two presidential campaigns.
It could prove to be disastrous for the Republican Party. Trump's false claims of rigged elections in Georgia depressed Republican turnout during two crucial Senate runoffs. The loss of these races cost Republicans their Senate majority. A decline in GOP voter confidence could cause some GOP voters to leave the country in competitive House and Senate elections next year, and possibly in the presidential race in 2024. This would put Washington's balance of power at risk.
Pick a state, pick an election, then pick a national election. If we do that, we will be in the second place we were before, stated Geoff Duncan, Georgia's Republican lieutenant governor. He is a Trump critic and is not running for reelection. That's code for lost.
Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan. John Bazemore/AP Photo
Republicans in California did not seem to be ignoring the potential danger last week. On the eve for the recall election, Republicans from Orange County made a plea to voters: This Election can only be stolen if you don't vote.
The recall in California, a Democratic-heavy state, would not have been successful despite what Republicans had to say about voter fraud. For Republicans all over the country, the problem is that the Trumpian position is the only acceptable political position they can take on the matter. Despite overwhelming evidence, two-thirds of Republicans believe that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president. This disconnecting from reality is what drives Republican candidates to make blatant claims about the cheating of the other side.
There are two types of people: normal people and politicians. Stephen Richer is the Republican recorder for Maricopa County in Arizona and is a strong critic of the Arizona state Senate-led review on the 2020 election in his area. Unfortunately, politicians are motivated by a different Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Fundraising and followers are two of the most important factors. Both of these factors seem to be well served by Stop the Steal crowd.
Arizona's ex-TV anchor Kari Lake is running to become governor. She insists that Trump won the state, and claims in digital ads that our election integrity has been destroyed.
Garrett Soldano, a Republican candidate to become Michigan governor, told supporters at a rally that their vote would count but that it was only because so many Americans are watching. They will not be able to forget what they did in the past election.
Then there's the Trump support group who conspired to undermine the 2020 election, and all have launched secretary-of-state bids in their own states. Trump has endorsed three of these people: Jody Hice, a Georgian representative who is primarying Brad Raffensperger, Michigan's Kristina Karmo, and Mark Finchem, an Arizona state rep. All three have made falsehoods about Trump's defeat and subsequent his endorsement a major part of their campaigns. Republicans who tried to undermine public confidence in last election's elections will now be overseeing future contests.
John Thomas, a Republican strategist, stated that a good campaign is one that listens to the voters and delivers it, particularly with survey data. He works on House campaigns throughout the country.
He said that there is a price for depressing general elections turnout. And I don't think that the Republicans have cracked that nut yet. It's difficult. It's really hard.
Thomas stated that he recommends candidates respond to questions regarding voter fraud by saying: Voting irregularities happen. They are real. We must do our best to ensure the integrity of the system. We must also ensure that more people vote for us than ours to overcome any cheating or shenanigans they might try to pull off in the home stretch. We must win by such wide margins that it is impossible to overcome, and with such an overwhelming majority.
It is possible that the impact of election fraud rhetoric next year on turnout will not be as large as in Georgia. This state experienced a denialism immediately after the presidential election. Arizona's long-red state was also flipped Democratic for the first times in many years.
An Athens voter drops off a ballot at an official dropbox during early voting on October 19, 2020. John Bazemore/AP Photo
Midterm elections are traditionally a referendum on the president in office. By 2022, Biden will be in office for two more years with a record that Republicans can run against. Voters may be focused on the economy, the coronavirus epidemic or other issues.
It is also possible that Republican voters will lose trust in elections by 2022. The fallout of Trump-friendly reviews regarding the presidential vote in Arizona, and other states, could be a chance for this. Ginsberg stated that if Trump's allies cannot prove his claims in Arizona they can't prove them anywhere else and election denialisms power starts to fade.
This is the optimistic view. Ginsberg's assessment is that it will take at least one election cycle to get through. Former governor of New Jersey. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican, is a vocal critic of Trump and said that Republicans are now making false election claims in an effort to undermine the 2022- and 2024 elections.
Potter, the former chair of the FEC, is now the head of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. He foresees possible confrontations at court as well as at the polling stations in the midterms, and during the next presidential election.
Dick Wadhams (a former Colorado Republican Party Chair and party strategist) said that he believes we need Republican candidates who can stand up and declare, Bunk, there has been no election fraud, and we lost the election fair-and-square. It is time to examine ourselves and see why we lost. This was due to an incumbent president who couldn't control himself and gave the White House to Democrats and the Senate to Democrats.
Wadhams voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. He was so tired of making absurd claims about 2020's election, he wrote a column last week in The Denver Post criticizing Republicans who he claimed were determined to ensnare the party in stolen election conspiracy theories.
He stated that the notion that Republicans will never lose another election, even if it is lost because it was stolen, was his opinion just the day before this column was published. 1. It doesn't address why we lose elections. It undermines the process that we have had for about a hundred years in this country.
