Trump and some of his supporters sought to amplify problems with scanning ballots in roughly 25% of polling places in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and the majority of the state’s population. Democrats held narrow leads Wednesday in too-close-to-call races for governor and U.S. Two years later, the state remains pivotal. Jennifer Morrell, a former local election official in Colorado and Utah who also now advises federal and state officials on election security and administration, said election officials were able to resolve issues quickly, showing that safeguards to ensure an accurate ballot count work.Īfter Trump lost Arizona to Biden by just over 10,000 votes two years ago, he and his supporters peddled a string of allegations about election wrongdoing that crumbled under scrutiny. The director of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly, said Wednesday that the agency has “seen no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was any way compromised in any race in the country.” Those cases targeted mail-in voting rules, voting machine security and access for partisan poll watchers.īut problems did not materialize on Election Day. More than 100 lawsuits were filed across the country before Election Day. Since then, the GOP has kept up the rhetoric and laid the groundwork for contesting this year’s midterm elections in an effort to sow doubt about Democratic victories. In 2020, conspiracies about a rigged election were fueled by bogus reports of suitcases stuffed with fraudulent ballots at a Georgia vote-counting operation and “ballot mules” loading up drop boxes with fraudulent ballots. president, seeking to subvert elections are going away,” said David Levine, the elections integrity fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a former elections director in Ada County, Idaho.

“While I think yesterday’s election was smoothly conducted, nobody should assume that those forces, including the former U.S. Trump and GOP allies are distorting the truth about election hiccups that experts say officials handled well, including voting machine malfunctions in Arizona’s largest county and errors in the poll books used to sign in voters in Michigan’s largest city.

Two years after conspiracy theorists spread lies about President Joe Biden stealing victory from Trump, they are now propagating smaller lies about the 2022 midterm elections. That has not stopped former President Donald Trump and other Republicans from falsely portraying minor snags at polling places to undermine confidence in the results. Voters did not encounter widespread problems on Election Day.

Days campaign subvert election