--:-- Gideon Resnick: I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is a special series from Apple News Today that is all about the 2022 midterm elections. Today, the rise of election deniers.
--:-- [Discussion continues, but no other speaker is identified]
--:-- Gideon Resnick: For nearly two full years now, former President Trump has repeatedly told his supporters that the 2020 election was stolen. They can try to steal the election from us. Based on the rigged election, they're destroying our country. I don't believe we'll ever have a fair election again. Now, his claims have been disproven by multiple courts, various recounts, and the window for contesting the election is long over.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But across the country, and really up and down the ballot, dozens and dozens of candidates have campaigned on this lie. And in turn, Trump has endorsed them. Many of those candidates are now in positions to win their races in a number of key states this November. And some of the offices they're seeking will have a direct role in certifying elections moving forward.
--:-- Amy Gardner: All of it made us realize that a foundational principle of our democracy was under attack, And that is the principle that our elections are free and fair and that we have faith in them and that we will accept the results of our elections even when they don't go the way that we wish that they did.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Amy Gardner is a member of The Washington Post's Democracy Team, an initiative that was started by the paper a few years ago to combat the misinformation swirling around elections and our democratic process.
--:-- Amy Gardner: And I think that is the basic premise for the team. Gardner has been tracking candidates running for office this November who are what she calls election deniers. And specifically, she's looking at candidates who are running for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: These are all positions that directly have some involvement in overseeing future American elections. In total, she and her team have identified 299 candidates who could win office this November who are election deniers. That's 53 percent. It's a majority. And that's just an astonishing number for a variety of reasons.
--:-- Amy Gardner: Because it shows how much the lie about the 2020 election has completely taken over the Republican Party, how it has become a price of admission for many races in this country, primary races.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Former President Trump has taken it on as a personal mission to attack and try to discredit anyone who really actively tries to say it's not true. The election was not stolen in 2020.
--:-- Amy Gardner: But the other reason why it's astonishing is because many of these people are going to win their general elections in November. And to me, that's the real story is what happens then.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A few weeks back, the Washington Post asked the candidates running in some of the most closely watched statewide races in the country if they would accept the results of their election contests. On the Democratic side, all 19 nominees said they would. On the Republican side, seven said they would. Twelve either refused to say yes or declined to respond.
--:-- Amy Gardner: And that's scary and means that chaos will happen if these individuals don't accept their results. But some experts out there said what's scarier really is not if they lose and contest their result. It's if they win. And then they're in power in offices with authority over election administration. And they would be in those offices for the 2024 presidential race.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And so for a lot of people, that's the actual scarier outcome. And I'll give you an example. Doug Mastriano is the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, the governor appoints the secretary of state. The secretary of state has the authority to certify or choose not to certify election results.
--:-- Amy Gardner: He has said that he is going to choose a like-minded person to serve as secretary of state. I get to appoint the secretary of state, who's delegated from me the power to make the corrections to elections, the voting logs and everything.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He has boasted that he could decommission all of the machines in the state with the stroke of his pen and would do so if he believes that they produce fraudulent results.
--:-- Amy Gardner: I could decertify every machine in the state with a stroke of a pen via my secretary of state. I already have the secretary of state picked out. It's a world-class person that knows voting integrity better than anyone else in the nation, I think.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I already have a team that's going to be built around that individual. The governor in every state also has the authority in a presidential election has an obligation actually to sign the certificates of electors which are those certificates that go to Washington for the Congress to do the final step of counting the Electoral College result.
--:-- Amy Gardner: That's the act that was underway last January 6th in Congress when the insurrection occurred. So he didn't respond to us. He suggested before his primary victory that he might not accept the result if he lost his primary.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So what happens if he loses the general election to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is ahead substantially in many polls in that state? He'll be in that position of power for 2024 if he wins, and he will most certainly protest his loss if he loses.
--:-- Amy Gardner: Yeah. And Mastriano is an example that sort of typifies this broader phenomenon that you have found in the course of this reporting, but you've also looked specifically at other states that were key in the 2020 presidential election, namely Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: When you look at those states specifically, how many election deniers won their primaries, and in what other offices are we talking about here?
--:-- Amy Gardner: I've been slicing and dicing the total universe this last couple of days since all the primaries were completed, and I'm finding it's a majority in every category. If you just look at senators, U.S. senators, it's a majority if you just look at U.S. House races. It's a majority if you just look at governor's races. It's a majority if you just look at secretary of state races.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: We only looked at secretary of state races where that office administers elections. It's a majority, which is, again, just a really stunning and sobering finding, I think.
--:-- Amy Gardner: So, Amy, we have so many examples of people that fit this category, right? In Arizona, you have the Republican Secretary of State candidate Mark Fincham, the gubernatorial candidate Carrie Lake there as well. They've both said that they would not have certified the 2020 results if they were in office at the time.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Lake at one point actually went so far as to say those who did certify the results should be in prison. And you know what? Come to think of it, there's a few other people I'd like to send right down to the prison down here in Florence. anybody who was involved in that corrupt shady shoddy election of 2020 lock them up so let's say that somebody like mark fincham wins in november and there is no desire from him to certify the results in his state then what happens do we have guardrails in place for a scenario of that sort?
--:-- Amy Gardner: We do, and it's the courts. So let me create two different scenarios for you. One is if Mark Fincham contests his own defeat if he loses in November. He's not in office now, so he currently doesn't have the powers of the office to do much.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There are legal processes for contesting a result, and most of them are through the court system. Also, recounts in many states are another recourse. But once those means are exhausted, it's over.
--:-- Amy Gardner: And many states have laws that say that you cannot contest an election beyond a certain date, which is an important point, too, when you think about how many people are still talking about decertifying the results of 2020. That's not a thing. That's not legal.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The deadline for contesting results in the states has long passed for 2020. So that's scenario one. Scenario two is if Mark Fincham is elected in November. He's secretary of state in 2024. Joe Biden wins in Arizona. And Mark Fincham says, no, I'm not certifying the results.
--:-- Amy Gardner: So immediately, the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party of Arizona would sue and would seek a judicial intervention ordering Fincham to certify the result because the state law is very clear. You have the power to certify, but it's really what most people in these offices call a ministerial power.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You certify the popular vote after it's been canvassed, meaning certified by the counties. And there's not really supposed to be a lot of wiggle room there.
--:-- Amy Gardner: So that's one guardrail are the courts. But what happens if the courts don't order him to do that, you know? And what happens if they do and he says, no, I'm not going to?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Gardner also gave me the example of Michigan, where it's not the secretary of state that certifies election results. It's something called the board of canvassers.
--:-- Amy Gardner: And at the state level, it's made up of two Democrats and two Republicans. So they can deadlock on party lines. And in 2020, those two Republicans wavered and almost didn't certify the result. And then they did But since 2020 the Republican Party of Michigan has changed dramatically and they purged a lot of people who were not in lockstep with Trump on issues of election integrity
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And those two Republican appointees to the board of canvassers have been replaced So what happens in 2022, let alone 2024? You have a Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who's running for reelection.
--:-- Amy Gardner: You have a Democratic attorney general, Dana Nessel, who's running for reelection. You have a Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, who's running for reelection. All of them are running against deeply, like over-the-top election deniers who will in all likelihood contest their result if they lose.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If the board of canvassers or boards of canvassers at local levels refuse to certify the results, Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state, and Dana Nessel, the attorney general, are already prepared and have already discussed their plan to immediately go to the Michigan Supreme Court and say, please order them to certify.
--:-- Amy Gardner: They must do so under the law. And in their case, the Michigan Supreme Court, if I'm not mistaken, is controlled by Democrats. So they would likely prevail.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So there are guardrails. It's just a question of where that guardrail is weaker and what happens if someone digs their feet in and says, no, I won't. Nobody knows.
--:-- Amy Gardner: Yeah. And to that end, you know, you can go through this entire kind of chaotic process, get the right results certified and still emerge from it with a significant percentage of the population believing that the system is not working.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So where are voter sentiments now on all of this? And do you worry that if we have yet another election where one side is claiming fraud so uniformly that we're in some sort of deep hole that is going to be difficult to emerge from?
--:-- Amy Gardner: I do worry about that. I do think there is an enormous swath of the Republican electorate that believes that the 2020 election was stolen and will believe that subsequent elections are stolen if the people whom they look to for leadership and whom they trust tell them that it is.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that includes Donald Trump. They believe him. They trust him. And I do think it's incumbent upon all of us, even those among us who do not believe that the 2020 election was stolen, to try to understand better why so many Americans do love Donald Trump and believe what he says.
--:-- Amy Gardner: So back to your question, I feel like there's two interesting scenarios that are worth pondering. One is that many places at the county level where boards of election or boards of canvassers, depending on what they're called, are the body at the local level to certify might refuse to do so are going to be Republican communities.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A lot of the places that we have heard about Trump supporters harassing, threatening, questioning local election officials were places that went overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020. Places in rural Michigan, places in rural Arizona, places in rural Georgia.
--:-- Amy Gardner: And those election officials have resigned or retired in droves because it's just not worth it. It's been so hard to do their jobs under threat. One woman in Michigan told us that she checks her closets when she gets home at night. She feels so threatened.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So it's bizarre to contemplate that the places where election deniers might succeed in sort of gumming up the process of certifying a result and sowing more doubt in the public consciousness would be places where the Republican candidate is likelier to have won.
--:-- Amy Gardner: So it doesn't make a lot of sense. And then the other scenario, of course, is if that happens in more contested battlegrounds that are potentially difference making to an outcome. And we don't know what that looks like, you know?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Right. This is sort of something that has been on my mind reading all this and thinking about all of this. And maybe it's a question you can't answer, but I want to ask it anyway. Do these candidates truly believe that the 2020 election was stolen? Or at this point, is this just the only way to be politically viable in a Republican primary?
--:-- Amy Gardner: It's a great question. I can't state definitively what's inside a candidate's head and heart. I can tell you that I do believe some number of these candidates know that the election was not stolen, but also determined that their political survival was more important than sharing that fact with their constituents.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And you can see it in candidates who have moderated since they won their primaries. I give you an example Don Bolduc Republican nominee for the United States Senate in New Hampshire He a retired military officer And he said at a debate I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying that Trump won the election and damn it I stand by my election And then he won the nomination and New Hampshire is not a deeply red state at all.
--:-- Amy Gardner: And he almost immediately said, live and learn, right? And I've done a lot of research on this and I have come to the conclusion and I want to be definitive on this. The election was not stolen. Then, earlier this month, he seemed to shift his opinion again, saying in part, I can't say that it was stolen or not. I don't have enough information.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The implication there could be that he had a genuine change of heart. I'm sure that's what he would say if we asked him about this right now. And then the implication could also be that he will say what he believes he needs to say to win votes.
--:-- Amy Gardner: There's good reason for Bolduc to believe that trumpeting this lie is the best way to win votes, or rather that to not do so could cost him politically. Republicans who have crossed Trump have not done well in primaries this year.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In fact, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him made it to their general elections. Representative Liz Cheney is one of those 10 who lost her primary. She has been among the most vocal Republicans to speak out against Trump and his falsehoods about the election.
--:-- Amy Gardner: She's also the vice chair of the committee investigating the attack at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Here's what she had to say after her loss. The path was clear, but it would have required that I go along with President Trump's lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That was a path I could not and would not take. The polls support this, too. Just a couple of weeks ago, a Monmouth University poll found that six in 10 Republican voters still believe Joe Biden did not win the election.
--:-- Amy Gardner: I mean, I get so many emails and mentions on Twitter and DMs on Facebook and mentions on Telegram all over the place harassing me for the articles that I write about election deniers and about the lack of evidence of fraud in 2020.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And they believe I'm wrong. They believe I'm lying. They really believe it. And that's the difference between them and many of the people who've been making the case to them.
--:-- Amy Gardner: And it's not just the candidates who are running for office on this platform. And it's not just Donald Trump who continues to litigate his own defeat in his head over and over and over again. It's also this collection of people who are making money off of it, people like Steve Bannon.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And it's also people who are currying favor with Trump who want to be favored in his orbit. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, you know, Patrick Byrne, the Overstock guy. These are people who want to be close to Donald Trump.
--:-- Amy Gardner: And, again, do I know that they know that what they're saying isn't true? No. But there are an awful lot of people who appear to be making money or gaining political influence by disseminating these theories.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I want to close by asking, as you are sort of proceeding towards this cycle, where you think we go from here? You know, if a portion or half of our electorate believes what we know to be untrue, how do we have a functioning democracy?
--:-- Amy Gardner: Well, the grim reality, in my opinion, is that we've already seen a United States president encourage his supporters to take up arms against the government, right? Democracy doesn't survive when people believe that they have a right to resort to violence to attain their desired political outcomes.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So the grim reality is that if enough people continue to believe that our elections are not being fairly administered, there will be violence again. As we said when we wrote about in our big investigation package last year about the January 6th attacks, January 6th was a beginning. It was not an ending.
--:-- Amy Gardner: And I think every American needs to be aware of that and understand it.
