‘Stop The Steal’ Redux Taking Shape To Challenge A Trump Defeat
As sure as day turns into night, if trump loses in November, he will not accept election results while hundreds of his supporters in the top echelons of government are getting ready for a challenge that will make the 2020 “Stop the Steal” effort look amateurish.
Trump has ramped up his efforts to undermine a possible Democratic victory in November while he plants the explosives for a potential riot like the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising by his supporters at the Capitol.
In a recent interview, trump refused to say he will accept the results of the 2024 race. Instead, he said, “If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results. If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”
Trump told a rally in Las Vegas that a rigged election is the only way he could lose in November.
“The only way they can beat us is to cheat,” trump said. “Don’t let them cheat. Don’t let them do anything.”
Trump and his vice presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, have consistently sought to undermine 2024 election integrity. Both have challenged recent polls which show the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is edging ahead of the trump/Vance ticket.
Vance dismissed the polling results and said the “media uses fake polls” to hurt Republicans. He said in an interview on Fox News that in 2016 and 2020, “the media uses fake polls to drive down Republican turnout and to create dissension and conflict with Republican voters.”
A critical part of the plan to insure a trump victory in 2024 will continue to be misinformation, with the willing help of such trump-supporting outlets as Fox. In a recent example, Fox editor Maria Bartiromo tweeted information “from a friend” about alleged voter fraud.
“Friend of mine’s wife had to take her 16 yr old son to the DMV this week for a new license. Couldn’t get an online appointment (all full) so went in person and had to go to 3 DMV’s to get something done. First DMV was in Weatherford. Had a massive line of immigrants getting licenses and had a tent and table outside the front door of the DMV registering them to vote! Second one was in Fort Worth with same lines and same Dems out front. Third one was in North Fort Worth had no lines but had same voter registration drive.”
The report could not be verified beyond Bartiromo’s claims but it was enough to spur Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to look for evidence of possible vote harvesting by ordering raids of the homes of volunteers with the League of United Latin American Citizens. Paxton said the raids were part of an “ongoing election integrity investigation” into allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections. He said a two-year investigation “provided sufficient evidence to obtain the search warrants.”
In 2022, the Republican National Committee (RNC) invested millions of dollars to hire 18 state “election integrity” directors and 19 state “election integrity” lawyers. The party has recruited more than 5,000 poll watchers and nearly 12,000 poll workers, according to the RNC.
The Democratic National Committee said the GOP plans to ensure “voter integrity” are designed “to spread dangerous lies about rigged elections,” if trump loses.
The RNC is leading a “Protect the Vote Tour” for “election integrity” in the 2024 election. The RNC hopes to recruit 100,000 poll watchers, poll workers and “legal experts” including at least 5,000 volunteers in the swing state of Pennsylvania. An RNC press release said that Republican poll watchers will be observing voting and reporting any irregularity.
“In the event of an irregularity or problem, RNC lawyers and the volunteer attorneys that they have coordinated will provide rapid response services to resolve the issue using a sophisticated, tested action protocol,” the statement said.
Attorneys will be stationed at target processing centers where mail ballots are tabulated. Every battleground state is operating its own “Election Integrity Hotline” where lawyers “will guide poll watchers through the appropriate election code and provide clarity on how various issues should be answered, resolved, or escalated.”
Leading the effort are trump’s daughter-in-law, RNC co-chair Lara trump; RNC Chairman Michael Whatley; former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi; and Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., who objected to certifying Pennsylvania’s results in 2020.
Among upcoming GOP plans to challenge 2024 results, the Washington County (Pa.) Republican Party will host a “Fight for Our Republic” dinner and fund raiser on Sept. 3, at the Double Tree by Hilton in Meadowlands, Pa. The keynote speaker will be the far right, election denier, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
“We will be asking (Greene) to speak her mind, totally unfiltered,” says a Facebook notice of the dinner.
Tickets range in cost from $5,000 for “The Donald Package” and $2,500 for “The Melania Package” to $1,000 for “The Barron (trump) Package” and $200 for dinner and a meeting with Greene. It was unclear if packages meant donors will meet trump, his son or his wife.
An Aug. 18 poll watcher training session in advance of the dinner was closed to the press but a statement said the session would provide “a comprehensive overview of Pennsylvania’s electoral process, as well as guidance on how Poll Watchers can play an important role in upholding election integrity. You will learn how to observe and report any potential problems that may arise during the voting and tabulation process.”
Colorado is part of a nationwide trend in which local Republican officials vote against certifying elections. After elections last year, Ron Hanks, the chairman of the Colorado GOP Ballot and Election Security Committee, recommended that county boards not certify election results.
Hanks wrote that “nothing has changed since the 2020 elections” and that “Colorado’s voter rolls remain a playground for election-manipulators, despite Judicial Watch’s lawsuit and victory over Soros-funded, partisan- hack Jena Griswold, Colorado’s dismal Secretary of State.”
Hanks was referring to Griswold’s agreement in March 2023 to settle a lawsuit filed by the right wing Judicial Watch over voter roll maintenance practices. The watchdog group had claimed that Griswold’s office failed to remove ineligible voters from the state’s rolls. The discrepancy led to artificially high registration rates in many counties, the lawsuit claimed.
As a part of its agreement to dismiss the case, Griswold, a Democrat, denied all claims that Colorado violated federal laws that govern voter roll maintenance. Her office agreed to provide Judicial Watch with public data from a federal survey on an annual basis for the next five years. Hanks has claimed that Griswold is funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
Since the 2020 election, at least three dozen local officials have delayed certifying or voted against certifying the results of an election, for races ranging from the presidency to school board, according to a review by USA TODAY. Many who cast the votes are still serving in office and came from Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
A pivotal member of the ongoing efforts to cloud the election system is Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who was key figure in “Stop the
Steal” who has worked closely with Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas.
The N.Y. Times reported as far back as May 2022. that in seminars around the country, Mitchell has been marshaling volunteers to stake out election offices, file information requests, monitor voting, work at polling places and keep detailed records of their work.
“She has tapped into a network of grass-root groups that promote misinformation and espouse wild theories about the 2020 election, including the fiction that President Biden’s victory could still be decertified and Mr. Trump reinstated,” the Times reported.
Mitchell leads an effort called the Election Integrity Network, a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing think tank which received $1 million in 2021 from trump’s political action committee, Save America PAC. Mark Meadows, Trump’s final White House chief of staff, is a senior partner.
Meadows was one of 18 others who were indicted on August 14, 2023, in the prosecution related to the 2020 election in Georgia. On April 24, 2024, Meadows was indicted by an Arizona grand jury on felony charges along with several others related to their alleged efforts to subvert Biden’s 2020 victory in the state.
In August 2020, Mitchell enlisted John Eastman to join the Election Integrity Network. Eastman is the lawyer who crafted specious legal theories claiming Vice President Mike Pence could keep Trump in power. Eastman and 18 others were indicted on August 14, 2023, in the prosecution related to the 2020 election in Georgia. In April 2024, Eastman and 17 others were indicted in the prosecution related to the 2020 election in Arizona.
Mitchell also was on the phone with trump when he asked Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to “find 11,780 votes” that could reverse trump’s defeat there. The phone call was later cited in the article of impeachment in the second impeachment of Donald Trump introduced in the House of Representatives.
On August 14, 2023, trump, along with 18 co-defendants, was indicted in Fulton County on charges including racketeering and fraud. The phone call was a central element of the indictment.
The Election Integrity Network has held seminars and trainings throughout the country and is “recruiting election conspiracists into an organized cavalry of activists [who will be] monitoring elections … She has tapped into a network of grass-root groups” that promote the “big lie” and believe Trump won the 2020 election, the Times reported.
Election Integrity Network trainings have included “aggressive methods” such as surveillance, and encouraging participants to verify voter rolls through use of the EagleAI NETwork, an electoral roll management system that conservative activists use to file mass challenges to voter registration.
A key example of the GOP efforts to twist election laws to benefit trump involves the Georgia Election Board. As a result of the campaign, the Georgia Legislature changed the make-up of the state election board. Raffensperger was removed as chair of the state election board and other board members not considered trump backers also were removed and replaced by three, trump supporters. It is part of a plan to ensure that a victory for Harris could not be easily or quickly certified.
Many of the same lawmakers who denied that trump lost in 2020 remain in office and many others are candidates. “Replacing the Refs,” a report by the non-partisan States United Action, reported that 126 sitting members of Congress voted to overturn the 2020 election results. The total number of election deniers include 20 Senators; and 151 members of the House of Representatives. Seven election deniers are on the ballot for the Senate and 164 are on the ballots for the House.
The full House and a third of the Senate are up for re-election in 2024 and a new Congress will certify the 2024 Presidential election.
The report shows that 170 members of Congress, about a third of the total, are election deniers, representing 36 states. Many tried to overturn the 2020 election, either in court or by disrupting certification of the results. Others have pushed election lies and conspiracy theories in front of their constituents.
States United Action defines election deniers as have falsely claimed that trump won the 2020 presidential election instead of the legitimate winner, Biden.
Election deniers also:
Refused to certify, or called on or pressured election officials to refuse to certify, the 2020 presidential election results or a race in subsequent elections based on meritless claims about election fraud, voter fraud, misinformation, or lies.
Acted to undermine the integrity of the 2020 presidential election or subsequent election cycles, including: Filing or supporting litigation seeking to overturn the results based on conspiracies or baseless legal theories; Filing or supporting litigation that was sanctioned for being malicious or without merit in the aftermath of an election, Promoting or participating in a Stop the Steal–sponsored or branded event or rally during or following the 2020 election; or calling for a “forensic audit” of the 2020 presidential election or a race in subsequent elections after the results were certified, were officially audited, or stood up to multiple legal challenges.
Election deniers also “spread lies or promoted conspiracies about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election or subsequent election cycles in public, including in social media, press statements, or comments to the press.”
Deniers “refused to concede a race, or publicly supported a candidate’s refusal to concede a race, after the results were officially audited or stood up to multiple legal challenges.”
In December 2020, more than 100 members of Congress attached their names to a brief supporting a baseless lawsuit that sought to invalidate the election results of four whole states that had selected Biden for president. The lawsuit was rejected by the Supreme Court.
Leading the recruitment effort for the legal brief was Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., the current speaker of the House and second in line to the presidency. Johnson spread false information that there was “a lot of merit” to allegations about rigged voting machines in 2020.
A poll by States United showed that voters believe members of congress have substantial influence over elections. The poll showed that 59 percent of registered voters said Congress has a “great deal” or “fair amount” of power when it comes to running elections.
“Elections are administered by state and local officials — which voters understand. But members of Congress can exploit their power, pass laws, and chip away at public trust in democracy,” the poll reported.
Congress has a number of election powers. Lawmakers determines federal funding for election administration, which ahs totaled about $5 billion over the past two decades. Members of Congress have a say in redistricting procedures while the Senate confirms federal judges, who may hear election cases, and certain executive branch officials, such as the attorney general, who are charged with defending elections. Both chambers can decide whether to accept or reject the seating of members elected to Congress.
After presidential elections, Congress counts and then officially declares results of the Electoral College vote and presidential election. In 2020, almost 150 members of Congress objected to the results from two states. The first of the objections were interrupted by the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack by trump supporters.
If no presidential candidate gets a majority of the Electoral College votes, the House of Representatives chooses the president. Each state delegation gets one vote. And while this has not happened in 200 years it’s made more plausible in 2024 because election deniers make up 35 percent of the House, and they are in the delegations of three-quarters of the states.
In the Senate, deniers include: Katie Britt, R-Ala.; Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.; Rick Scott, R-Fla.; Mike Braun, R-Ind.; Roger Marshall, R-Kans.; Rand Paul, R- Ky.; John Kennedy, R-La.; Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss.; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.; Steve Daines, R-Mont.; Ted Budd, R-N.C.; J.D. Vance, R-Ohio; James Lankford, R-Okla.; Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.; Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.; Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; and Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.