By Guardian - Peter Stone - Tue 3 Sep 2024 11.00 BST

Spread of conspiracy theories seeks to foment early election doubts in case Trump loses, some Republicans say

Donald Trump and election denialist allies at Turning Point USA, True the Vote and other Maga stalwarts are spreading conspiracy theories about election fraud in order to lay the groundwork for charging the election was rigged if Trump loses, warn election experts and some veteran Republicans.

The consequences of the strategy could be dire. John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa Arizona who spoke at the Democratic national convention in August in support of Vice-President Kamala Harris’s campaign for the presidency, said that former president Trump and his allies “will throw everything at the wall and see what sticks”, if Trump loses.

He added: “They’ll claim everything went wrong if they lose. I’d be surprised if Trump doesn’t try to foment insurrection if he loses the election.”

Twin drives by Trump and Maga allies echo some falsehoods from 2020 about fraud due to voting machines and drop boxes, but now promote Trump’s conspiratorial attacks on federal and state prosecutors who filed criminal charges against him for trying to subvert his loss in 2020, and push baseless claims that noncitizens are poised to vote in large numbers.

Turning Point USA, for instance, has touted a multi-million dollar drive to get out more votes for Trump in key swing states, while holding a few big rallies for Trump where bogus claims are still being made that the 2020 election was rigged, and new fears are being raised about potential fraud this year.

Trump and his Maga allies have spent months decrying “election interference” and “lawfare” to sully federal and state charges he faces over his multiple and aggressive efforts to block Joe Biden from taking office on 6 January 2021, a tactic that aims both to rally his backers and undercuts the rule of law, experts say.

Further, as in the 2020 and 2016 elections, Trump has waffled about committing in advance to accept the results of this year’s elections as he did in his June debate with president Joe Biden.

“If it’s a fair and legal and good election – absolutely,” Trump said after being asked three times if he would accept the results. But then Trump repeated a false claim that US elections are filled with fraud to justify his sprawling efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat. “I would have much rather accepted these – but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous.”

This year too false charges of sizable voting by noncitizens have become commonplace in the Maga ecosystem. They are spurred in part by Trump and House speaker Mike Johnson holding a press event at Mar-a-Lago in April on the topic that led the House to pass bill to outlaw voting by noncitizens – even though it is already illegal and historically has been miniscule.

To drum up fears of noncitizen voting, True the Vote sent out a fundraising appeal in March that cited the group’s efforts to “draft arguments for litigation” and other plans to thwart what it baselessly claims will be election “chaos” this year “by way of mass illegal voter registrations”.

Election experts and Republican veterans warn that such efforts by Trump and his Maga allies are harbingers for claiming the election is rigged if Trump loses.

“Trump continues to encourage his supporters like Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA to question the integrity of our elections,” ex-Republican congressman Dave Trott of Michigan told the Guardian “He has no evidence or basis for claiming fraud and is only perpetuating these lies so he has a plan B to disrupt democracy in the event he loses.”

Other critics and experts concur.

“A lot of false claims are masquerading as efforts to change policy to improve election integrity when in actuality they’re just designed to sow distrust in our system if Trump loses,” said David Becker who leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “This is all designed to manufacture claims that if Trump loses, the election was stolen and to sow discord, chaos and potential violence.”

On another election front, Trump has also attacked Vice-President Kamala Harris baselessly for spearheading a “vicious, violent overthrow” of Biden to replace him as the party’s nominee, and insinuated that Harris and Biden intentionally failed to provide proper security for his rallies that spurred the assassination attempt against Trump.

The dual drives by Trump and allies like Turning Point USA to mobilize Trump supporters to vote, and to sow doubts about the electoral system started months ago but seem to have picked up steam since Biden dropped his re-election bid and Harris became the Democratic nominee.

Kirk, Turning Point’s founder and far-right media star, used his eponymous radio show in February to blast the multiple criminal charges Trump faces in conspiratorial terms as a Democratic plot. “The regime couldn’t beat Trump in a primary,” according to an online promo for Kirk’s show that featured Will Scharf, a Trump legal team member “So, to win in 2024, they’re banking more and more on lawfare to save them”.

To boost Trump’s election prospects, Turning Point Action, the political arm of Turning Point USA, announced plans in early 2024 to spend tens of millions of dollars to get out the vote for Trump in key swing states including Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin with a “Chase the Vote” program, which the group claims is being mounted by hundreds of paid staffers in those states.

Meanwhile Kirk’s group has hosted a few large events for Trump to rally more backing for him that have included bogus claims that mimic earlier ones of 2020 voting fraud.

Kirk raised the specter of voting fraud at a June rally that Trump attended at the Dream City church in Phoenix where Kirk proclaimed that “we are going to make November too big to rig and we are going to overwhelm the ballot boxes”. At the rally, Trump also vowed to make the election “too big to rig”.

Likewise, TP Action has expanded its role in trying to appeal to Christian nationalist voters which Kirk has made a priority to help Trump. TP Action in July hosted a “Believers Summit” in Florida that Trump spoke at where he raised more concerns about his fealty to election integrity by urging in enigmatic terms: “Christians, get out and vote, Just this time … You won’t have to do it anymore.”

While TP Action has a mediocre record in recent general elections backing hard-right candidates like election denialist Kari Lake who lost her race for governor in 2022 and claimed fraud afterwards; but the group flexed its muscles in a Republican primary in July that knocked off Stephen Richer, the top election official in Maricopa county, who rejected election denialist charges in 2020 and 2022.

Although they lack the resources of Kirk’s well funded operations, Texas based True the Vote has long played a role in pushing election conspiracies about voting fraud at drop boxes and other bogus charges, and the group is once more working to sow doubt in Wisconsin.

Catherine Engelbrecht, who founded True the Vote in 2009, in an interview on 30 July with Christian nationalist and self-styled prophet Lance Wallnau, said her group was partnering with a few sheriffs in Wisconsin to monitor drop boxes for voting fraud using camera equipment that the group plans to provide.

True the Vote’s game plan for watching drop boxes has echoes of one that it mounted in 2020 when it helped fund rightwing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza make the film 2,000 mules about alleged cheating at drop boxes that was widely discredited.

Engelbrecht also has boasted of plans to use a new app that she has said is being deployed by 7,000 people to help clean up allegedly bloated voter rolls in several states, a ploy that some election officials and experts have faulted for its inaccuracies, according to a July CNN report. Becker told CNN that “voter lists are more accurate than they have ever been” because of data sharing tools.

Republican veterans say the actions and rhetoric of Trump and his Maga allies are aimed at fomenting doubts again about the safety of the election system which they will exploit if Trump loses in November.

Given Trump’s unending false claims about 2020 election fraud, ex-Republican congressman Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania told the Guardian that if Trump loses “I expect he will do the same thing in 2024. If he loses he will raise Cain in state capitals and he will descend on state capitals with his allies to make the case for fraud.”