Will your vote count? Trump supporters are already working against 2024 election results.
Donald Trump, to the chagrin of many campaign advisers, just cannot stop lying about how the 2020 presidential election was "rigged" in favor of Joe Biden.
Trump, in rallies and interviews with right-wing hosts, proclaims his need for support in November to be "too big to rig" the election's results.
But what happens if state and local election officials, who back Trump and buy into his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, decide to mess with the results after Election Day on Nov. 5?
There is now a constellation of good government groups watching for just that, preparing for the potential of partisan activists in official roles attempting to stall or stop the certification of elections if the results show Trump a loser yet again.
They could be looking at an actual effort to rig the election, based on how some local officials acted in 2022 and 2023.
It bears watching. The threat looms.
A look at elected officials who worked against the 2020 election results
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit known as CREW, released a report last week that examined the actions of "35 rogue election officials" in eight states who have attempted to disrupt or deny local election certifications since 2020.
In American elections, local officials tally the ballots and certify the results in reports to state officials. In presidential elections, the states send the certifications to the Electoral College. Then, electors meet in each state to cast votes for the winner before the U.S. Congress certifies the results.
The riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, an insurrection spurred on by Trump's refusal to admit defeat, was an effort to stop Congress from voting on that certification.
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This November, stalling certification at the local level can have a "cascading effect," Noah Bookbinder, CREW's executive director, told me. He said states are on tight deadlines, and using the courts to force state and local officials to do their jobs can be time-consuming.
Bookbinder said election officials attempting to invalidate certifications since 2020 have only one reason to have done that – as "a kind of dress rehearsal for this fall." He sees those officials as following through on Trump's "stop the steal playbook" from 2020, which he still uses to push election lies this year.
For now, Bookbinder said, he has only seen "a coordinated national effort" to impact certification in just one of seven swing states that could decide the election – Georgia.
Republicans have been working to soften Georgia for election disruption
Georgia's State Election Board on Aug. 6 voted narrowly along party lines, with Republicans winning approval for a new rule that injects the phrase "reasonable inquiry" into the process for local election officials to certify results.
Pretty vague, right? One official's reasonable inquiry could be another official's nefarious disruption.
Trump was certainly pleased, shouting out by name the board members who supported the change during an Aug. 3 rally in Atlanta where he ranted and raved about Georgia officials who blocked his 2020 attempt to overturn the election in that state.
The America First Policy Institute, a warehouse of former Trump administration advisers hoping to be future Trump administration advisers, filed a lawsuit in May in support of a Fulton County election official's efforts to vote against certifying the primary election that month.
Fulton County is Georgia's most populous county. Trump still faces criminal charges there for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election in that state.
"Our best analysis is the folks who are pushing this tactic have really honed in on Georgia as a place to use kind of as a laboratory this fall," Bookbinder said. "So there, we're seeing some real signs of national organization."
A nationwide effort – with a focus on battleground states
Georgia may be the most organized state in this kind of effort. But it is hardly alone.
Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan, anti-authoritarianism group, has tracked 34 instances since 2020 of state or local election officials attempting to delay or deny election certifications in nine states. Six of those states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania – are considered electoral battlegrounds that could help determine the election's result in November.
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Ben Ginsberg, a Republican attorney who served as national council for presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004 for George W. Bush and in 2008 and 2012 for Mitt Romney, said recent attempts to block election certifications look like a test run for November, but without a coordinated strategy in place to plan that.
Coordinated or not, the issue "is now on a lot of radar screens, as it wasn't before," Ginsberg told me. He said voters need to pay more attention to the potential for election officials to "abuse" the process.
"If anyone tries to abuse the certification process, people should be worried about their votes not being counted accurately," Ginsberg said. "If somebody tries to overturn the results of an election by holding up a certification, that disenfranchises all voters across the board."
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Trump's lies erode voter confidence in elections – among Republicans
A Pew Research Center survey last month found that 61% of Americans are very or somewhat confident that November's election will be conducted fairly and accurately, a level of opinion that hasn't changed much since 2020.
But that survey shows a deep partisan divide on the issue, with only 47% of Republicans believing that, compared with 77% of Democrats.
That's not an accident. Trump started casting spurious shade on election results eight years ago, months before his 2016 victory. He never stopped. He can't stop. His fragile ego is too threatened by the concept of losing to ever accept it as a mathematical fact.
Trump did it again Wednesday during a news conference, allegedly about the economy, where he rambled on with lies about the 2020 election while again complaining that his various civil and criminal legal entanglements are a form of election interference.
That's a long con from a swindler already held accountable for running a real estate business rife with fraud. The only way to defeat this sort of scam – trying to dispute election certification – is to recognize it for what it is and publicly call it out. Some of Trump's most faithful supporters will still be easy marks for this. It falls to the rest of us to reject it.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's election lies include renewed effort to disrupt 2024 results
