Election deniers are trying to rewrite the law

In the conspiracy-soaked aftermath of the 2020 election, far-right activists called for ballot inspections based on elaborate – and false – theories.

In Georgia, election deniers pushed for an overhaul that could catch counterfeit ballots because they were not folded, appeared to be marked by a machine or were printed on other cardboard. In Arizona, auditors were hunting for bamboo fibers in ballots to prove they came fraudulently from Asia.

Those theories were rejected outright, without a shred – or fiber – of evidence to support them. The national attention of voters and the mainstream news media eventually shifted to the 2024 elections.

But one bill introduced in the Georgia House of Representatives tries to address these concerns.

The bill, which passed in committee, would require the secretary of state to post high-resolution digital images of scanned paper ballots online and keep them there for 24 months, a demand made by conspiracy theorists in 2021. (Similar bills regarding ballot scans have come out of committee in the New Hampshire and Arizona legislatures.)

More than three years after the 2020 election, the lies and untruths about President Biden's victory persist and continue to influence efforts to pass election laws across the country. In addition to the bill working its way through the Georgia Legislature, more than 70 bills in at least 25 states draw some connection to conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to a review of data from the Voting Rights Lab, a vote-tracking group . legislation.

These theories include falsehoods about ballot box security and voting by undocumented citizens, as well as questions about fraudulent absentee ballots and corrupt election machines – all of which have been thoroughly debunked by judges, election officials and independent experts.

“We see the type of legislation changing every year, but a common denominator is that it is often rooted in misinformation about the 2020 election, and it threatens to disrupt actual election administration,” said Liz Avore, a senior policy advisor at the Voting Rights Lab.

The bills drafted so far are at different stages of the legislative process. Still, the sheer number of measures rooted in election disinformation is another indication of how widespread the falsehoods about the 2020 election have become within the country's Republican base.

Perhaps the most consistent and pervasive conspiracy theories about the 2020 election focus on voting machines. Although multiple lawsuits have thoroughly debunked claims of defective or fraudulent machines, distrust of the technology remains at the heart of the election denial movement.

One bill in the Georgia Senate – SB 189 – would ban barcodes on ballots, which the machines currently used in Georgia require to count and tally ballots. The bill has already passed the full Senate and is making its way through the House of Representatives.

Sen. Max Burns, a Republican and one of the bill's sponsors, did not respond to requests for comment. But in a recent interview with The Associated PressMr Burns said the bill would help “create clarity” for voters, adding that “the biggest challenge for a voter is knowing their vote has been correctly recorded.”

Fifteen bills in nine states, including Arizona, Florida and New Hampshire, would ban the use of such tabulations, forcing a manual counting of ballots. The laborious – and potentially error-ridden – manual counting of election results has slowly become a priority for many in the election denial movement. A similar bill was passed by the full Arizona Legislature in 2023, but that also happened vetoed by Governor Katie Hobbsa Democrat and former top election official.

“We see it growing in popularity every year,” Ms Avore said of the hand counting legislation. She added: “It's a very extreme proposal, and we're seeing it go from not even being on anyone's radar, not even being considered, to actually being passed into the legislature over the course of just two years.”

In addition to the voting system, eight states are considering bills that would require documentary proof of citizenship to vote, even if there is no evidence that large numbers of noncitizens voted.

Former President Donald J. Trump continues to do so falsely claim that millions of immigrants are undocumented register to vote, and in 2016 he falsely declared that he would have won the popular vote “if you subtract the millions of people who voted illegally.”

An investigation from the Brennan Center in 2017 found only about 30 incidents of suspected noncitizens voting out of 23.5 million votes in 42 jurisdictions, or 0.0001 percent.