This Week: MAGA Supporters Push More Conspiracy Theories About Rigged Elections While Continuing To Assault Systems That Ensure Election Integrity
This week, federal investigations against former President Donald Trump continued. Judges ruled that former Vice President Mike Pence and Trump administration officials must testify before a grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, while an appellate court ordered a Trump lawyer to turn over documents in the criminal “investigation into the former president’s retention of classified records” at Mar-a-Lago.
State-level investigations against former President Trump continued as well. As he prepared “to face a likely indictment” in New York by warning of “potential death & destruction” if he is indicted, Trump urged a state court in Georgia to prohibit Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from indicting him for attempting “to subvert the 2020 election.”
In the wake of conspiracy theories that systems to prevent election fraud are funded by “liberal billionaire” George Soros, MAGA-dominated states are abandoning the use of such tools. MAGA supporters in Arizona and North Carolina introduced legislation to remove their states from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which states use to share data to ensure accurate voter rolls and prevent voter fraud.
The anti-ERIC legislation is one of many bills to reduce voting access that conspiracy theorists are currently pushing in Arizona. These include bills to restrict early voting and access to ballot drop boxes that made it through the Arizona Senate Elections Committee this week. Conspiracy theorists in Arizona also moved legislation to require judges to order new elections when as few as 250 voters complain about election procedures.
Meanwhile in Arizona, the state Supreme Court rejected failed MAGA candidate Kari Lake’s effort to overturn the 2022 gubernatorial election results. The court ruled that Lake’s claims are “false.”
Georgia is also considering a bill to ban ballot drop boxes, as well as legislation to make it easier to challenge voter eligibility. A bill to reduce access to grants that fund election administration in urban counties cleared the state House this week.
Despite a lack of success in finding and convicting people of voter fraud in Florida under a new law that created “election fraud police,” MAGA supporters in four states, including Texas, are attempting to create new police forces “specifically to target voter fraud, following the example set by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.”
MAGA leaders in Michigan continue to push conspiracy theories about stolen elections, while, in North Carolina, they are pushing legislation to restrict voting access by making it harder to vote early.
In a victory for voting rights advocates in Pennsylvania, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Republican operatives that tried to prevent counties from “ballot curing” to help voters fix “minor, technical deficiencies on mail-in ballot envelopes” and ensure every vote counts.
