A man participates in exit polling after voting in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary at Dreher High School on Feb. 24, 2024 in Columbia, South Carolina. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — A pro-democracy organization warned Monday that disinformation and violent rhetoric could make the weeks that follow Election Day especially fraught, pushing the country past the upheaval that arose four years ago during the last presidential transition.
The comments from three members of the Defend Democracy Project came just days before voting ends on Nov. 5, though with several races extremely close, the country may not know for days who won the presidential contest as well as control of Congress.
That could leave considerable space for speculation as state election workers count mail-in ballots and potentially undertake full recounts, similar to four years ago.
“I think the biggest vulnerability will continue to be the mis- and disinformation that will happen in the aftermath of the election,” said Olivia Troye, who previously worked for Vice President Mike Pence as a special adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism.
Troye raised concerns that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump may make false claims about election fraud and encourage violence similar to what took place on Jan. 6, 2021, should he lose the Electoral College again.
Troye referenced an election bulletin from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security she said cautioned that “candidates, elected officials, election workers, members of the media, judges involved in these cases” could all become targets of post-election violence.
“And they’re also concerned about the visible attacks and violence on polling places or ballot drop boxes,” Troye said, referencing the burning of ballots inside drop boxes in Oregon and Washington states early Monday morning.
Michael Podhorzer, chair of the Defend Democracy Project, said during the virtual briefing for reporters that one of the reasons many state officials didn’t go along with requests to “find votes” for Trump in the days following the 2020 election was because President Joe Biden had “two states to spare.”
“And that created a prisoner’s dilemma for every Republican election official who might have done the wrong thing,” Podhorzer said. “So if you take the call to (Georgia Secretary of State) Brad Raffensperger, he understood that even if he could find those votes that Trump wanted, unless two Democratic secretaries of state overturned their results, Donald Trump was not going back to the White House.
“And what that meant was that there wasn’t any single actor, in the way there was in 2000 in Florida, who could actually change the results of the election.”
That could be different this time, should Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris win by a small margin, potentially just one state’s Electoral College votes, he said.
Accepting the results
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released a survey Monday showing 86% of registered voters believe whoever loses the presidential election should accept the results, though just 33% expect Trump will concede if he fails to secure the votes needed to win the Electoral College.
About 77% of those surveyed expected Harris to accept the results should she lose the presidential race.
Anxiety about post-election violence was rather high among the registered voters surveyed, with 76% saying they are extremely or somewhat concerned about violent attempts to overturn the election results.
Eighty-two percent said they were at least somewhat concerned about “increased political violence directed at political figures or election officials.”
Voters are also worried about foreign interference in the elections, with 78% of the registered voters surveyed saying they are extremely or somewhat concerned about it “influencing what Americans think about political candidates.”
The co-chairs of Issue One’s National Council on Election Integrity — former U.S. Reps. Barbara Comstock, R-Va., Donna Edwards, D-Md., Tim Roemer, D-Ind., and Zach Wamp, R-Tenn. — released a written statement Monday addressing a fake video produced by Russian actors about ballots in Pennsylvania. The statement also criticized a Maryland Republican congressman who said North Carolina should just give its Electoral College votes to Trump.
“Foreign adversaries are seeking to influence U.S. elections by sowing division and spreading false information to undermine confidence in our system of self-government,” the co-chairs wrote. “In addition, people who want to win at all costs continue to spread false claims about election integrity and may create chaos, delay results, and challenge the outcome of our fair electoral process.”
The four wrote the suggestions from Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the far-right U.S. House Freedom Caucus, that North Carolina simply grant its 15 Electoral College votes to Trump “before votes are counted are dangerous and against the rule of law.”
“By rejecting the so-called independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court affirmed that state legislatures do not have the power to replace the popular will with a slate of electors,” they wrote.
Issue One describes itself as a “crosspartisan” organization that works to “unite Republicans, Democrats, and independents in the movement to fix our broken political system and build an inclusive democracy that works for everyone.”
Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report.