What sets 2024 apart from 2020 is how much better organized and prepared national pro-democracy organizations have been to strategize their counterattack against bad actors.
Opinion: You can trust that your vote will count on Election Day
There is a lot of misinformation out there trying to sow doubt in our election process, but Wisconsin has numerous protections in place to ensure the election is secure.
A friend recently messaged me on Instagram saying, “Enjoy this throwback to 2016” and shared the debate clip when Hillary Clinton reminded everyone Donald Trump has a history of complaining about “manipulation.”It’s worth revisiting Clinton’s comments in their entirety:
“Every time Donald thinks things aren’t going his way, he claims whatever it is is rigged against him. The FBI spent a year investigating my emails. They concluded that there was no case. He said the FBI was manipulated. He lost the Iowa caucus. He lost the Wisconsin primary. He said the Republican primaries were rigged against him. Then Trump University is indicted for fraud and racketeering. He claims the legal system and the federal judge is rigged against him. There was even a time when he didn’t get an Emmy for his TV show for three years in a row and he started tweeting that the Emmys had been tampered with. This is a mentality. That’s how Donald thinks. And it’s funny, but also really disturbing. That’s not the way our democracy works. We have been around for 240 years. We have had free and fair elections. We accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them. And that is what we should expect from anyone who stands on a debate stage during a general election.”
In the eight years since she warned us, we have weathered his Big Lie of 2020, the insurrection of January 6, 2021, and we are bracing for whatever further disinformation will infect Election Day and beyond. If Trump ultimately falls behind or loses, we can absolutely expect the post-election period to be marked by lies designed to disrupt the electoral process and democracy itself.
How can elections be undermined? Deceive, disrupt and deny
Election experts at Protect democracyan ideological nonprofit dedicated to defeating the authoritarian threat and building more resilient democratic institutions, has compiled a comprehensive overview 2024 Election Subversion Strategy which outlines three tactics election deniers are using to lay the groundwork for claims that the 2024 election was rigged: mislead, disrupt, deny.
The first is to cheat the electorate by spreading disinformation through bad actors through the media and social media to undermine voter confidence. We see this as early as 2024 through voter status issues and misinformation about non-citizen voters (look no further than the statewide referendum on non-citizen voting in Wisconsin) and demands that ballots be counted by hand.
Secondly, the electoral process is disrupted or otherwise caused chaos. This can be accomplished by making unlawful threats to election officials or by making unlawful threats to election officials targeting them with ads that suggest they don’t need to certify the results. It could also take the form of recruiting confrontational poll workers pollsters in swing states and train them to be ‘spies’. Or it could be a file “zombie lawsuits” – which are submitted even though they have no chance of success, but can still be used overrule voters afterwards.
Finally, deny any certification of election results they don’t like. This could look like Trump again claiming victory before all the votes have been counted given that we very likely cannot have a clear winner on election night. It could also look like a new campaign designed to put pressure on local officials whose job it is to certify county-level results or interests through the Electoral College process.
Maybe Trump will win outright and all the hand-wringing over election denial will be for naught. But if he doesn’t, what do we, the people who trust our elections to be secure, do to counter these strategies so they don’t gain enough momentum? We are provided with accurate information and the truth.
Pro-democracy groups have organized and are ready to push back
What sets 2024 apart from 2020 is how much better organized and prepared national pro-democracy organizations have been to strategize their counterattack against bad actors. Next to Protect democracy, the Brennan Center for Justice, Informing democracyand others have a host of research, whitepapers, FAQs and more information that people can easily read and share.
For statewide election information, go straight to the horse’s mouth: the Wisconsin Elections Commission. It has a section on its website where it discusses voting and election myths such as “Were more than 1,000 absentee ballots sent to ineligible voters in the 2024 general election?The answer is No. WEC also outlines the handful of cases where Voter fraud attempts were attempted and prevented.
For more local information, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is feverishly publishing transparently voting information of what poll observers can and cannot doto explain why Milwaukee will do that report a final count after midnightUnpleasant filming an uninterrupted demonstration of voting equipment on Election Day.
The League of Women Voters Wisconsin has also published a series of articles called Mood bulletin that explains everything from the run-up to the elections testing equipment to election rules convicted criminals.
Unfortunately, when it comes to some people, no amount of evidence will stop them from believing that there is no way for Trump to lose other than massive fraud.
Those of us who stand up for the truth must be willing to be louder than the election deniers, backed by accurate information and prepared to condemn, correct and expose the lies.
Kristin Brey is the “My Take” columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.