The frivolous effort to mass-disqualify voters
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The rise of mass voter challenges, explained
Election denial claims are unfounded in reality. That doesn’t mean they come out of nowhere.?
By this time in 2020, you could have easily predicted what false claims about the election would likely be. If Trump were to lose reelection, it was a safe guess he and his supporters would point a finger at policy changes that made it easier to vote by mail in a pandemic —?drop boxes and so on?— as reasons he lost. The seeds of the conspiracy theories were planted way before anyone actually voted.?
Something similar is happening this time around. But now the focus is all on “cleaning the voter rolls” of supposedly “ineligible” voters.?
Some lawmakers, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, are pushing legislation targeted at preventing noncitizens from voting — nevermind that it’s already illegal in all federal elections and not at all a significant issue (the Heritage Foundation’s own research has found only 24 instances of noncitizens voting illegally across 20 years). Election denial organizations and the RNC are filing lawsuits around voter rolls, list maintenance, and supposedly deceased voters (that these lawsuits are likely to be quickly dismissed seems to be no obstacle). Slowly, the narrative is building: “people who aren’t allowed to vote are on the voter rolls!”
You don’t have to be a fortune teller to know where this is going. Mass voter challenges — efforts to identify and contest purportedly “ineligible” voters en masse — are likely to be an election subversion tactic of choice this time around. The goal is not just to try to disqualify some voters and throw chaff into the machinery. They’re also a disinformation tool to cast an air of doubt over elections and potentially (just?like last time) justify efforts to overturn the results.?
I can already hear the bad-faith and circular reasoning: “how can an election where the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters was disputed possibly be trusted?”?
A paper published this week by Clint Swift, Sara Loving, Jessica Marsden, and Orion Danjuma explores the growing trend: Unraveling the Rise of Mass Voter Challenges. These frivolous mass challenges are already happening and they’re likely to get worse.