ANN ARBOR, FLINT AND DETROIT, MICHIGAN — U.S. election officials in battleground states are pushing back against disinformation about election integrity and working to assure Americans that their votes will be counted.
Officials from both major parties in six states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — met in Ann Arbor, Michigan, last month for panel discussions hosted by the nonpartisan group Keep our Republic. The group seeks to educate the American public about threats to the U.S. election system and build trust in the electoral system.
They’re working to avoid a repeat of November 2020 scenes in nearby Detroit and other American cities where supporters of then-President Donald Trump, riled up by his baseless accusations of election fraud, pressured officials to stop counting the votes.
This year, many Trump supporters who spoke with VOA say they worry about fraud in this election.
“Right now, our government, you're going to question everything about it,” said Marvin Minton, a Trump supporter who attended the Republican presidential nominee's town hall event in Flint, Michigan, in September. “I wish I could say differently, but that's not how America feels. We don't trust nobody.”
Angelina Kandow, who was also at the Flint event, said, “Was [the 2020 election] stolen or not? One case, one case is enough to question the whole system.”
Some Trump supporters quoted alleged instances of 2020 election fraud that were disproven during court cases triggered by the more than 60 lawsuits filed by Republicans and the Trump campaign after that year’s election.
Disinformation around election integrity has gained traction among Republicans, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts poll, released in August.
The poll found 67% of Republicans trust Trump and his campaign for accurate information on the outcome of the election. Only 51% of Republicans said they trust the government’s certification of election results.
In contrast, 87% of Democrats trust government certifications, while 82% trust Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, and her campaign.
Dangerous disinformation
Officials in battleground states say disinformation can be dangerous.
“They can in some cases lead to people making threats to election officials or worse, based on lies or misinformation they have been told about elections,” said Jonathan Brater, director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections.
“Even if it doesn't result in any sort of physical violence, it does undermine trust long term in the election system, which is bad for our republic and is bad for our democracy,” he told VOA.
Meagan Wolfe, an election official in Wisconsin, another battleground state, has been targeted with intimidation, even death threats. Republicans loyal to Trump have attempted to oust her over false claims that she helped to rig the 2020 vote in favor of President Joe Biden.
Wolfe encouraged people who don’t trust the election process to become involved.
“They can become a poll worker. They can become a poll observer. They can watch the audits of the voting equipment,” she told VOA.” All of that is open for [the] public to view.”
In many states, efforts to ensure voters that elections are secure are supported by Republicans. Justin Roebuck, a Republican election official in Ottawa County, Michigan, acknowledges it’s an uphill battle.
“Our political leaders at every level need to also seek facts and to seek data,” he told VOA. “And I think until that happens, we will have a problem in terms of our confidence and trust in the process.”
Roebuck said he is working directly with citizens, instead of through the campaigns.
“We have very decentralized elections in the United States. There are always things that we can do better,” he said. “Sometimes we have to work through those challenges and work through those messes.”
Messy in Michigan
It’s already looking like it could become messy in Michigan. Republicans loyal to Trump have sued Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, over absentee ballot processing guidelines and voter registration lists.
“If Jocelyn Benson is not responding to what is required under the law, we will take her to court to get the courts to compel her to do that,” Michigan Republican Party chairperson Pete Hoekstra told VOA.
Benson dismissed it as a Republican strategy to create a “false sense of irregularities in the process.”
“In general, we see lawsuits masquerading as a legal strategy when they're really a PR strategy to get misinformation or sow seeds of doubt about our elections into the narrative,” she told VOA.
She said that there are “more checks and balances in place than ever before” to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the election process.
Both parties have launched election-related lawsuits in various battleground states, which could mean chaos in the November election.
“Any kind of legal challenge happening this close to an election, typically, is lawyers putting a placeholder in case they may not win in a state or may not have an outcome they like, and it gives them the ability to challenge the election after the fact,” said Kim Wyman, senior fellow with the Bipartisan Policy Center's Elections Project in Washington.
There are other potential disruptions, including efforts to delay election certification by county officials who support Trump.
“We've seen some legal maneuvers and some boards of elections that have changed the rules that allow more scrutiny over the canvas period and the certification of the election,” Wyman told VOA.
After Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 loss culminated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, Congress sought to prevent such events from recurring by passing the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act.
Mandatory deadline
The reforms set a new mandatory December 11 deadline for states to submit certified slates of presidential electors, provided expedited court access to resolve challenges and raised the threshold for objecting to election results in Congress.
Battleground states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina have passed legislation to ensure that canvasses, recounts, audits and legal challenges meet the new deadline.
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have not, leaving their electoral systems vulnerable to partisan lawsuits and political pressures that could force them to miss the certification deadline.
This could leave uncertain the fate of 29 electoral college votes. A presidential candidate needs at least 270 electoral college votes to win.
VOA’s Rivan Dwiastono contributed to this report.
