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As President Donald Trump continues to push Republicans to aggressively gerrymander ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, a new analysis has found more than 50 candidates running for key offices who have in the past engaged in efforts to nullify election results.
As reported by NPR on Monday, election watchdog States United Action has released a report showing that election-denying candidates are running for offices in 23 states where, if victorious, they would have a direct role in certifying future elections.
States United classifies election deniers as candidates who meet one of five criteria: Falsely claiming that Trump won the 2020 election, spreading conspiracy theories about the election results, refusing to certify the 2020 election, supporting litigation to overturn election results, and refusing to concede a race after being defeated.
In total, States United found at least 53 such candidates running for positions this year, including secretaries of state and governorships, that would put them in position to try to block or impede the certification of elections.
The threat is particularly acute in Arizona, where election deniers are running for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general.
This prospective Arizona election denial ticket is headlined by MAGA hardliner Andy Biggs, who voted against certification of the 2020 election results as a US congressman and who is running to unseat incumbent Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
States United CEO Joanna Lydgate told NPR that her organization is tracking election deniers running for office to “provide voters with the most accurate information possible” and “understand exactly what these candidates stand for and whether they fundamentally believe in free and fair elections in this country.”
As election deniers are trying to win key offices throughout the US, the Trump administration is working to get more directly involved in purging voter rolls ahead of the midterms.
According to a Monday report from CNN, “Republicans and the Trump administration are now testing the scope of the federal law that imposes that ban on ‘systematic’ removal programs within three months of an election, as President Donald Trump pushes for more aggressive reviews of voter rolls for non-citizens and other ineligible voters.”
What this means is that states could in theory purge voter rolls just weeks ahead of elections, giving people removed from the rolls almost no time to file challenges.
Wren Orey, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project, told CNN that purging voter rolls less than three months before an election means there’s a high risk that “voters won’t have adequate time or notice to be able to provide the documents that they’ll need ahead of the election.”
“Maybe their birth certificate doesn’t meet the requirements,” Orey explained. “Maybe they don’t have one handy, maybe they don’t have a passport. That could take months to get.”
Brent Ferguson, the senior director of strategic litigation at Campaign Legal Center, told CNN that he was particularly disturbed by the Trump White House’s involvement in this effort to manage voter rolls.
“It sets up a situation where the federal government itself is the actor trying to purge voters from the rolls in the days before the election,” Ferguson said, “which is clearly illegal.”
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