Despite setbacks, election denial continues to thrive in Republican Party
Al Jazeera
Despite facing a wave of defeats in the 2022 midterm elections, election deniers have continued to push false claims.
Phoenix, Arizona – For nearly three decades, Buster Johnson served with little fanfare as a member of the Board of Supervisors in Mohave County, a deep-red section of western Arizona.
Even as former President Donald Trump pushed the false claim that widespread fraud was to blame for his loss in the 2020 election, the idea that such malfeasance had taken place in Mohave seemed laughable: Trump had carried the county by more than 50 points.
But that did little to stop the rise of election denialism in Mohave Country — and in the Republican Party at large.
Johnson, a lifelong Republican who previously was the vice chair of the party’s state chapter, said he was perplexed by the sudden pressure to implement new measures such as hand-counting each ballot.
That demand is common among election deniers, but experts say that technique for tallying votes is more error-prone, less efficient and more expensive.
