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The Oklahoma Board of Education has passed new curriculum standards that require educators to teach that the 2020 presidential election was rife with fraud or discrepancies — despite numerous judicial rulings and audits indicating that the election was legitimate.
The new standards were inserted into the curriculum by State Superintendent Ryan Walters, a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, shortly before the board voted on them earlier this month. At least one member of the board took issue with the fact that the changes to the curriculum were introduced well after the public comment period.
The curriculum now requires schools to have high school students “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information,” telling educators that students should examine the supposed “security risks of mail-in balloting”; dumps of ballots; and the “halting of ballot-counting in select cities.” The curriculum also states that educators should point to the election’s “unforeseen record number of voters” as a sign that something was amiss.
To date, all claims of fraud in the 2020 election have been thoroughly debunked, with numerous courts across the country ruling that such claims are totally without merit.
Despite this, the board still voted 5-1 in favor of the new curriculum. Ryan Deatherage, the lone member of the board to vote against it, said that Walters had rushed the process, even after Deatherage had requested a delay to consider the new changes.
“I was disappointed that we were misled. … I’m just going to say that I was disappointed the way that was handled,” Deatherage said, adding that he would talk to the state legislature before it considers passing the new standards.
Walters insisted that his office’s changes to the curriculum were uncontroversial — in a statement that also peddled unfounded conspiracy theories about the media’s role in the election.
“We believe in giving the next generation the ability to think for themselves rather than accepting radical positions on the election outcome as it is reported by the media,” Walters said in his statement.
The new curriculum also promotes other right-wing narratives, such as definitively teaching students that COVID-19 came from a lab in China — a theory that has not been proven to be true. It also promotes Christianity and Christian principles throughout. The new standards are consistent with Walters’s previous Christian nationalist initiatives, such as requiring every classroom in the state to have a copy of a Bible, an order that is currently being challenged by Oklahoma residents as violating theirs and their children’s First Amendment rights.
Meanwhile, Trump is continuing to push the “big lie” that he was the real winner of the 2020 presidential election, despite all evidence showing otherwise. In a Truth Social post on Monday, for example, Trump said that he refused to do an interview with The Atlantic reporter Ashley Parker, baselessly alleging that she was “not capable of doing a fair and unbiased interview” because “she doesn’t even know that I won the Presidency THREE times.”
Trump has only been victorious in two of his three presidential campaigns. Trump won in 2016 by securing a higher Electoral College vote count, despite losing the popular vote to his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. In 2020, Trump ran but was defeated by former President Joe Biden. And in 2024, Trump defeated Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in both the Electoral College and popular vote.
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