GOP Election Deniers Surge to Victory in 2024 Battlegrounds
In six key battleground states that played a decisive role in the 2020 presidential race, Republican candidates who have openly embraced former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” have won nearly two-thirds of the GOP nominating contests for positions with power over state and federal elections, a potentially seismic threat to democracy.
According to a Washington Post analysis published Monday, 54 of 87 Republican nominees for key posts in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have denied the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
“Had those candidates held power in 2020, they would have had the electoral clout to try something that the current officeholders refused: overturning the vote and denying Biden the presidency,” the Post notes. “Whether they could have succeeded in practice is a matter of vigorous debate among scholars, who cite the potential for court challenges and other means of upholding the results.”
“But the experts agree on one thing: A close presidential contest that comes down to the outcome in states where officials are willing to try to thwart the popular will could throw the country into chaos,” the newspaper adds. “It would potentially delay the result, undermine confidence in the democratic system, and sow the seeds of civil strife on a scale even greater than what the nation saw on January 6, 2021.”
Moreover, Trump, who is gearing up for a possible 2024 run as he’s under criminal investigation by the Justice Department, has endorsed and campaigned for many of the candidates featured in the Post‘s analysis, including Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake—a former TV news anchor whose incessant lies about the 2020 election catapulted her to a win in the GOP primary earlier this month, delighting the former president.
Furthermore, the Post‘s analysis confirms that Arizona, a state Biden carried narrowly in 2020, is a bastion of election denial on the GOP side: 12 of 13 Republican nominees for state and federal offices there have questioned the election, including the chosen candidate for secretary of state.
One prominent Republican officeholder that is actively boosting election deniers is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible 2024 presidential contender.
The Orlando Sentinel reported last week that DeSantis is “set to appear at rallies for Pennsylvania GOP governor’s candidate Doug Mastriano, Arizona candidate for governor Kari Lake, and U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, all of whom have denied Biden’s win and falsely claimed election fraud.
DeSantis was one of the first Republicans to suggest state legislatures could overrule voters to choose Trump.
Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called the rise of GOP election deniers across the U.S. “the biggest story not enough people are watching.”
“This is how our democracy could crumble, quickly and quietly,” Bookbinder warned.
Originally published at Commondreams.org.
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