Subverting 2024, part two: disrupt

How election deniers create the impression of cheating

Telling lies about the 2024 election is bad, but what makes it uniquely dangerous is how these deceptions inspire people to take action to disrupt our election processes. 

Hopped up on lies about a “rigged” election, a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 to stop Congress from certifying legitimate presidential election results. The attack wasn’t a spontaneous event; the momentum had built up for months and was spurred by many other attempts to interfere with the voting process. 

Unfortunately, many of the same bad-faith actors who led those efforts are preparing similar disruption strategies this year.

What does this look like in practice? Hundreds of bogus “zombie lawsuits” the Republican National Committee has buried in the courts to be resurrected after Election Day and cause chaos should their candidate lose. Self-appointed election watchdogs policing dropboxes. Recruiting volunteers to challenge votes at the polls and delegitimize the vote-counting process. In some localities, an unprecedented number of threats to election officials have required the installation of panic buttons and bulletproof glass to protect workers.

Part one of our Subverting 2024 series, “deceive,” discussed how election deniers are, like they did in 2020, deceiving voters with conspiracy theories about another “rigged” election. This edition, part two: disrupt, explains how those lies are designed to disrupt the voting process. The final edition of the series, part three: deny, will be about how the deceptions and disruptions are designed to build momentum to interfere with or halt the certification process.

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Attempts to disrupt the election process can take many forms. It’s happening in five distinct ways now: 

• Frivolous litigation seeking last-minute changes: The RNC and aligned organizations have already filed nearly 100 lawsuits — primarily in battleground states — to challenge established election rules and procedures. The majority of these lawsuits make, at best, questionable legal claims and are almost certain to fail. For example, in Nevada, the RNC is arguing that Department of Motor Vehicles data suggests that 6,000 noncitizens are registered to vote — but if past cases are prologue, the vast majority of those will turn out to be recently naturalized citizens. (For more, see part one of this series that debunks more “noncitizen voter” conspiracy theories.) At the time of publication, courts had already dismissed cases in Georgia, Nevada, and Maryland, and plaintiffs had withdrawn a case in Pennsylvania. However, success in the courtroom is not the primary aim of these suits. Putting false claims in the form of a lawsuit is a way to sanitize and add legitimacy to them. Should Republicans lose the presidential election, the RNC and others are likely to point to one of these lawsuits as “evidence” that the results are illegitimate and refuse to accept the outcome.

• Policing drop boxes and harassing voters: Calls for citizens to be “watchdogs” in their states and local communities have repeatedly crossed the line into intimidation when the “monitors” have photographed voters, doxxed them, worn military-style tactical gear, or otherwise behaved in a threatening manner. A chief instigator of such efforts is True the Vote, a self-appointed vote monitoring operation that co-produced the debunked election-conspiracy film “2000 Mules,” which falsely alleged extensive “ballot harvesting” at drop boxes; the film has since been dropped by its distributor in response to litigation alleging the film constitutes defamation and unlawful voter intimidation. During the 2022 midterms, a group affiliated with True the Vote announced a campaign to monitor drop boxes where voters deposit their ballots during early voting periods. People influenced by that campaign showed up in tactical gear outside drop boxes in Arizona. While a court blocked the campaign, similar campaigns may arise, whether in the form of drop box monitoring or some other way to intimidate and deter voters.

• The recruitment of confrontational poll watchers and observers: Some individuals are signing up to serve as poll watchers or observers as part of a national strategy to catch and expose preconceived notions of foul play. Since 2021, some states, including Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, have changed their laws to vaguely grant poll watchers “reasonable access” to ballots or entitle them to “effective” observation. Some of these laws also make it harder for election workers to remove disruptive poll observers. In Wisconsin’s 2024 state primary, various observers had to be removed by police for disruptive and confrontational behavior directed at poll workers. 

• Unlawful threats to election officials: Baseless allegations of voter fraud and alleged election irregularities have sparked extensive harassment and threats of violence targeting election workers, officials, and their families. In many cases, officials targeted by election disinformation face a wave of threats after being named in those conspiracy theories. More than one-third of local election officials have experienced threats, harassment, or abuse due to their jobs in recent years. Because women largely make up this workforce, they are largely the target of these threats. A 2024 analysis by Scripps News Service found that 80% of election workers in the U.S. are women.

• Abuse of public records requests: Election offices have faced surging public records requests from election conspiracists seeking evidence to support their theories — with requests increasing as much as 700% since 2020. Generative AI tools may make it easier to file even more requests in 2024.

While tactics differ widely in approach and scope, election deniers are taking these actions to create the impression that voters, election officials, and political candidates are cheating. They all share a common objective: to disrupt or otherwise cause chaos in the electoral process. 

Several safeguards are available to defuse the subversion strategies and can be employed to protect our elections. Defamation laws, anti-doxxing laws, the Voting Rights Act, the Ku Klux Klan Act, and other state laws can effectively constrain these harmful actions. For more analysis and information, please see our longer 2024 Election Subversion analysis here.

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The next edition of our Subversion 2024 series will dive into step three in the 2024 Election Subversion Strategies: deny.

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