![]() Candidates go out there and confirm it even if they don’t believe it’s true because they know it’ll work.” Increased education It’s that people believe it’s true they want somebody else to confirm that that belief has legitimacy. “That’s why it doesn’t matter if it’s true. “As a candidate, you can use that to leverage yourself in a campaign and get a following and get donors and supporters.” It is a “feedback loop” that fuels itself and helps insulate election deniers from the scrutiny of fact-checks, Bryant said. However, Bryant said the prevalence of election denialism among the Republican electorate pushes candidates to adopt the stance, which in turn lends perceived legitimacy to the false claim that the 2020 vote was marred by fraud. For example, Blake Master, who is running for the US Senate in Arizona, removed a statement from his campaign website that proclaimed Trump would be in the Oval Office if the 2020 election had been “free and fair”. Some conservative candidates have moderated their earlier rejection of the 2020 election results after winning the Republican nomination. Through nine public hearings, a congressional panel investigating the Januattack on the US Capitol building in Washington, DC has tried to link the deadly assault to Trump’s election denialism.ĭespite that effort, Trump-backed Republican candidates won hundreds of primaries before the crucial November 8 midterm elections that will decide the makeup of Congress, as well as top positions in dozens of states. But if trust continues to erode in the institutions, that is a real cause for concern.” “And as we saw what happened on January 6, that was the beginning of a real problem that … is being dealt with. “Any kind of democratic system is based off of the will of the people and the belief in the legitimacy of government,” she said. “But it means continual fighting for a while until we can sort out this period of discord with elections.”Įlection safeguards kicked into action after Trump tried to overturn the 2020 elections, with courts dismissing dozens of lawsuits alleging fraud and with legislators and state officials – including many Republicans – rejecting the then-president’s calls against certifying the vote.Įchoing Bryant, Brown said the “real danger” of election denialism is that it may chip away at general trust in democratic institutions. “It’s not like all is lost,” Brown told Al Jazeera. Mitchell Brown, a political science professor at Auburn University in Alabama, said election deniers in state legislatures may pass laws making voting more difficult administrators who organise elections also could enact restrictive rules that trickle down to the local level.īut there are checks and balances, including the court system, to push back against such moves. Republicans vehemently reject those charges, accusing Democrats who make them of deepening divisions in the country by demonising millions of conservative Americans. Other Democratic-leaning commentators have also accused the Republican Party of authoritarianism and fascism. “Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated,” President Joe Biden said in a September speech.ĭays earlier, Biden had called on supporters to vote in November to “literally save democracy”, describing Trump’s approach to politics as “semi-fascism”. In a year when Republicans are expected to make political gains, Karamo and other election-denying candidates, many of whom have been endorsed by Trump himself, may win in swing states that decide future presidential contests. If elected, Kristina Karamo – who has said Trump won Michigan in 2020 despite losing by 150,000 votes – would become the highest election authority in the state. This includes people running for positions that allow them to oversee future elections.įor example, in Michigan, the Republican nominee for secretary of state rose to prominence in right-wing circles after amplifying Trump’s unfounded fraud allegations. Election denialism – fuelled in large part by former US President Donald Trump who continues to falsely say that widespread voter fraud propelled Joe Biden to victory in 2020 – has gained prominence in the Republican Party over the past two years.Ī January 2021 Pew Research Center poll showed that 75 percent of Trump voters believed he won the 2020 presidential race and most Republicans believed that fraud often happens in elections.Īccording to a recent analysis by the Washington Post, the majority of the Republican Party’s nominees for office, nearly 300 candidates, are election deniers. ![]()
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