Protecting the Lie
Election denial has become the Republican Party's organizing principle.
Election denial has become one of the defining features of the modern Republican Party. It no longer exists on the political fringe. It is no longer confined to social media conspiracies or late night internet forums. It has become an organizing principle for the party itself, determining who advances, who receives Donald’s endorsement, and who is trusted to oversee future elections. The goal is no longer to persuade Americans that elections are secure. It is to convince them that democracy only works when Republicans win.
That reality was on full display this week in Arizona, where two prominent election deniers emerged victorious in Republican primaries. Andy Biggs secured the nomination to challenge Governor Katie Hobbs, while Alex Kolodin won the Republican nomination for Secretary of State, the office responsible for administering Arizona’s elections.
The following morning, Donald celebrated the results on his failing social media platform. In typical fashion, however, he appeared not to understand that these victories occurred in primary elections rather than the general election.
The irony is difficult to ignore because Arizona has already spent years indulging Donald’s fantasies about election fraud.
As NBC News reported in 2021, Andy Biggs testified before Congress regarding Arizona’s Republican led ballot review, better known by its wonderfully ridiculous name, the Cyber Ninjas audit. Apparently, somebody thought calling themselves Cyber Ninjas would make them sound sophisticated instead of absurd.
The Cyber Ninjas review was commissioned by Arizona Senate Republicans to determine whether Donald’s claims about the 2020 election had any merit. After months of speculation, millions of taxpayer dollars, and endless conspiracy theories, the audit reached the same conclusion every legitimate review had already reached.
Joe Biden won Maricopa County.
In fact, the Cyber Ninjas audit actually found that President Biden received slightly more votes than the certified results initially showed.
Despite those findings, Andy Biggs continued suggesting that nobody really knew what happened.
That simply was not true.
Biggs made those comments after the Cyber Ninjas report had already been released publicly. The evidence was available. The conclusions were clear. Yet facts have never mattered very much to people who are determined to preserve a lie that serves their political interests.
Donald, of course, continues promoting those same lies.
Last week, he delivered a primetime address devoted almost entirely to false claims about election fraud while using the appearance to promote the SAVE Act, legislation Republicans insist is necessary to protect elections from widespread fraud that simply does not exist.
Only days later, another story provided the administration with exactly the kind of distraction it needed.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill disclosed that a software error had allowed approximately 6,600 non citizens to register to vote. Fewer than 400 of those individuals ultimately cast ballots before the error was discovered and corrected.
Donald and his allies immediately seized on the announcement as supposed proof that non citizens are flooding voter rolls across the country.
It proves nothing of the sort.
The registrations resulted from a software error, not a coordinated effort to commit election fraud. State officials identified the problem, flagged the affected registrations, and removed them from the voter rolls. The system functioned exactly as it was supposed to.
More importantly, this isolated administrative mistake says absolutely nothing about the broader Republican narrative surrounding voter fraud.
That narrative has never been supported by evidence.
Over more than a decade and well over one billion ballots cast nationwide, documented cases of people illegally voting while ineligible remain extraordinarily rare. Election experts from both parties have repeatedly concluded that voter fraud is statistically insignificant and incapable of altering election outcomes.
That has not stopped Republicans from pretending otherwise.
Even before Governor Sherrill’s announcement, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had already sent letters to New Jersey and three other states claiming that tens of thousands of non citizens could be registered to vote. Curiously, neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the administration explained how those numbers had been calculated.
I think we know why.
They made them up.
The Department of Justice wasted little time escalating the situation. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon demanded that New Jersey provide voter records connected to the software error within five days.
Governor Sherrill responded exactly as she should have.
She pointed out that Donald possesses absolutely zero credibility when it comes to election integrity.
That observation raises an obvious question.
If Donald is genuinely concerned about protecting American elections, why would he dismantle the very agency created to help secure them?
Earlier this month, Donald effectively gutted the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, the independent federal agency established specifically to help states administer secure and reliable elections.
According to NPR, Donald removed the commission’s remaining Democratic members, Benjamin Hovland and Thomas Hicks. Republican Commissioner Christy McCormick resigned the same day, leaving the agency without a single sitting commissioner just months before the midterm elections.
It is difficult to believe that happened accidentally.
Meanwhile, Donald’s allies continue insisting the 2020 election deserves yet another investigation despite the fact that Donald’s own Attorney General, Bill Barr, publicly concluded years ago that the election was among the most secure in American history.
That has not stopped Republican lawmakers from recycling the same discredited talking points.
This is what Senator Ron Johnson said:
The 80 courts that looked at the 2020 election, most of them never took a look at evidence. They just dismissed them on some... It was either a moot issue because the election was already certified. So again, we truly have never fully investigated what happened in 2020.
Ron Johnson is lying.
He knows he is lying.
The claim that the 2020 election was never fully investigated is absurd.
The election was investigated repeatedly.
There were recounts.
There were audits.
There were forensic reviews.
There were investigations conducted by Republican officials, Democratic officials, career election administrators, independent experts, state legislatures, and the federal government.
More than sixty lawsuits challenging the election were dismissed or rejected by courts across the country, including by judges appointed by Donald himself.
No credible investigation uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud capable of changing the outcome of the election. To be perfectly honest, even saying there was “no widespread fraud” almost grants legitimacy to a false premise. There was no evidence of meaningful fraud at all. Certainly nothing remotely capable of changing the outcome of a presidential election.
That should have ended the conversation years ago.
Instead, Republicans continue resurrecting the same conspiracy theories because they were never interested in discovering the truth. They were interested in preserving a political narrative that allows them to question every election they lose while demanding unquestioning acceptance of every election they win.
And that should concern every American, regardless of political party, because once a democracy loses faith in its own elections, it begins losing faith in democracy itself.
Donald’s effort to undermine confidence in American elections did not end with recycled claims about 2020. During his primetime address last week, he expanded the conspiracy by accusing China of interfering in the election through an illicit acquisition connected to American election infrastructure. He claimed intelligence existed to support those allegations while simultaneously insisting that much of the evidence would remain classified. That is a remarkably convenient position to take. Americans are expected to accept one of the most serious accusations imaginable against a foreign government without seeing the evidence that supposedly proves it. That alone should make people skeptical. Instead, many of Donald’s supporters simply accepted the claim because, by now, they have been conditioned to believe whatever Donald tells them, regardless of whether it is supported by reality.
Only a few days later, however, Donald’s certainty appeared to disappear. When reporters asked whether he intended to impose consequences on China for the interference he had described only days earlier, his answer was noticeably less definitive.
Donald: Well, we’re going to talk to them about it. It took place a long time ago. I think China’s maybe a little bit different today than it was then. But look, they do things and we do things to them. I’ll be honest. We do things to them too. It’s not a one way street, but we’ll be talking to them.
That is an extraordinary statement for several reasons. Donald not only retreated from the confidence he displayed during his address, but he also appeared to acknowledge that the United States interferes in other countries’ elections as well. If that is what he meant, it is an astonishing admission from an American president.
At the same time, it completely undercuts the urgency of his original accusation. If Donald genuinely believed China had interfered in an American presidential election, why would his response amount to little more than saying the two countries would talk about it? The answer seems fairly obvious. His own administration has failed to produce evidence that substantiates the sweeping claims he made only days earlier.
That conclusion becomes even harder to ignore when you consider Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s response. If China had truly interfered in an American presidential election, any reasonable person would expect that issue to dominate conversations between the Secretary of State and China’s foreign minister. Instead, when Rubio was asked directly whether election interference came up during his meeting, he offered an answer that was almost startling in its simplicity.
Marco Rubio: We didn’t discuss that topic.
That answer raises far more questions than it resolves. Donald’s entire argument rests on the assertion that China interfered in the 2020 election to benefit Joe Biden. If the administration actually believed that allegation, why would it not be among the first issues raised in a diplomatic meeting with Chinese officials? Why would there be no discussion about preventing future interference? Why would Rubio dismiss the subject entirely? His response tells us something Donald never intended to reveal. The administration itself does not appear to believe the narrative it has been selling to the American people.
This has become one of Donald’s defining political strategies. He makes an explosive accusation, dominates the news cycle for several days, encourages his supporters to repeat the claim as though it were established fact, and then quietly abandons it once the evidence fails to materialize. By that point, however, the damage has already been done. The objective was never to prove the allegation. The objective was to create confusion, deepen distrust, and convince Americans that objective truth no longer exists.
That is precisely why the Republican obsession with voter fraud should concern all of us. It has never truly been about protecting elections. It has always been about convincing Americans that elections cannot be trusted unless Republicans win. The evidence simply does not support the claims they continue making. After more than a decade of elections, countless audits, recounts, investigations, and court cases, voter fraud remains extraordinarily rare.
Election officials from both parties have repeatedly concluded that it is statistically insignificant and incapable of changing the outcome of national elections. Yet Republicans continue behaving as though the country faces an unprecedented crisis because the myth itself serves a political purpose.
Once people begin believing elections are fundamentally corrupt, it becomes much easier to justify laws that make voting more difficult. Voter suppression can be presented as election security. Restrictions on access to the ballot can be described as protecting democracy. Gerrymandering, voter subversion, and the systematic weakening of the Voting Rights Act become easier to defend because the public has been conditioned to fear a problem that scarcely exists. That has always been the point. The real threat has never been widespread voter fraud. The real threat has been the deliberate effort to make Americans lose confidence in the democratic process itself.
That is why our responsibility remains remarkably straightforward. Make sure you are registered to vote. Continue checking your registration between now and Election Day so there are no surprises. You can verify your registration at vote.gov, and you should encourage your family, your friends, your neighbors, and everyone you know to do the same. Then, when Election Day arrives, go to the polls and vote. Bring as many people with you as you possibly can because participation remains the most effective answer to every lie Donald continues telling about our elections.
Donald and the Republican Party want Americans to become exhausted. They want people to conclude that democracy is too broken to save and that participation no longer matters. They understand that citizens who stop believing in elections are far easier to manipulate than citizens who continue showing up. That is why we cannot allow ourselves to become cynical or disengaged. The antidote to election denial has never been resignation. It has always been participation. The antidote to conspiracy theories has always been truth. And the antidote to authoritarianism has always been the willingness of ordinary people to defend democracy by exercising the right so many others have fought to protect.
