FRANKLIN, Tenn. (AP) – A lone presenter in a crowded hotel ballroom showed off a computer screen and promised to show how easy it is to hack into the U.S. voting system.
Drawing gasps from the crowd, they highlighted theoretical vulnerabilities and problems from past elections. But instead of making efforts to improve election security, he said that all voting machines should be eliminated – a message wrapped in a conspiracy about elections being conducted in favor of certain candidates.
“We’re at war. The only thing that’s not flying now is the bullet,” said Mark Finchem, the GOP secretary of state candidate in Arizona last year who went on to lose and was the final speaker at the one-day conference.
Finchem is one of a group of Republican candidates running for governor, secretary of state or state attorney who contested the results of the 2020 election and who lost cleanly last November in important political battle states, including Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
But a deep distrust of the US election remains among Republicans, skepticism fueled by the false claims of former President Donald Trump and allies who have traveled the country with community groups and held forums like the one recently outside Nashville, attended by about 250 people.
As the nation gears up for the next presidential election, the election conspiracy movement that grew after the last one shows no signs of abating.
Millions have been convinced that any election in which their candidate lost has somehow been rigged against them, a belief that has fueled efforts among conservatives to ditch the voting machines and to stop or delay the certification of election results.
“Voters who know the truth about our election have faith in him,” said Liz Iacobucci, election security program manager with the voter advocacy group Common Cause. “But those who have been led to disbelief – they can be led to something else, like January 6.”
Trump, running for the White House for the third time, signaled that the 2020 election will remain an integral part of his 2024 presidential bid. that evidence.
“I’m in denial of the election,” Trump said. “You have a lot of electoral rejection in this country and they don’t like what’s going on.”
There is no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines in the US, and multiple reviews in battleground states where Trump denied his defeat confirmed the election results were accurate. State and local election officials have spent more than two years explaining the many layers of protection surrounding the election system, and last year’s midterm elections were largely uneventful.
Trump allies such as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn remain important voices calling for a ban on voting machines. They want hand-marked paper ballots to be counted individually without the help of machines by poll workers in nearly 180,000 polling places across the country.
“We all have the same agenda, to make our elections fair and transparent and not hackable,” said Lindell, who recently announced plans to form what he calls an “election crime bureau” to bring legal, cyber security. and legislative efforts in one organization.
In an interview, Lindell said he has spent $40 million since the 2020 election to investigate claims of fraud and support efforts to ban voting machines. He said he took out a loan to continue financing the work.
During the “America First Forum” held last month in South Carolina, Flynn told people gathered at a Charleston hotel that he was not only against Democrats but also against his fellow Republicans who refused to worry about the 2020 election.
“Our Republican Party, they want to move on,” Flynn said via video conference. “And frankly, the American people are not going to move forward.”
An investigation by the AP and the PBS series “Frontline” last year examined how Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, traveled the country spreading conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and vaccines as he built a movement based on Christian nationalist ideas. He relies on several groups such as The America Project and America’s Future.
The American project was launched in 2021 by Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com. Byrne said the election remains a top priority for the group, although it will also focus on border issues. Asked how much was planned before the 2024 election, Byrne told the AP, “There is no budget.”
“I have no children, no husband,” he said. “There’s no point in me saving anything.”
The newly filed tax forms do not detail where the group’s $7.7 million in income came from that year, but Byrne and Michael Flynn’s brother, Joseph Flynn, told the AP most of it came from Byrne himself. The group reportedly gave $2.75 million to Cyber Ninjas for a partisan review and was widely criticized for the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix.
Michael Flynn is now focused on the nonprofit group he leads, America’s Future, and other projects, according to his relatives. The group reported raising $2.3 million in 2021 and paying $1.2 million in grants, including just $1 million for Cyber Ninjas.
Others who have been at the center of efforts to raise doubts about the accuracy of the election are also active this year. Among them is Douglas Frank, an Ohio math and science educator, who said on his social media account that he met with various groups in six states in January, seven states in February and plans to be in eight states in March.
At the Tennessee forum, Kathy Harms, one of the organizers of the event, took the stage to talk about why she is fighting to get rid of voting machines.
“I didn’t do this for myself. I’d rather be a grandmother at home,” said Harms, who lives in the county where the conference is held. “I have grandchildren, I’m doing this because I want them to have what I have. I don’t want a banana republic.”
Presentations by people who work in information technology claim election officials have no security knowledge or experience.
One of them, Mark Cook, walked participants through the voting process, pointing out potential threats and playing a video speaking of “Iranian whistleblower” accessing US voter registration data to fraudulently request and send military ballots.
Cook said the video has some “real components” and “may be legitimate.” He did not mention that the influx of duplicate military ballots will soon appear because election workers log each person who casts a ballot, meaning that a second ballot that appears to be cast by the same person will be caught.
“There are thousands of ways to exploit the system,” Cook said, dismissing the security measures put in place by election officials as a “shell game” and “smoke and mirrors to distract us.”
Election officials acknowledged that there were vulnerabilities, but said they had various defenses in place to prevent manipulation or detect malicious activity.
“Election officials and their partners understand that their goal is not to create a perfect election system, but one that ensures that any attack on the election system does not exceed our ability to detect and recover from it.” said David Levine, a former local election official who is now a fellow with the Alliance for Securing Democracy.
Among those listening to the presentation at the Tennessee conference was Luann Adler, a retired educator and school administrator who said she had lost faith in elections after reading articles and watching online videos about voting machines. He has advocated in his community to ban voting machines and limit voting to one day.
Serving as a poll worker last year, Adler said, he had no problems. However, the experience did not change his mind.
“As we see today, machines can be manipulated,” Adler said. “I’m not pointing the finger at anyone or any community as evil, but I don’t trust the machine.”
Associated Press writer Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island; Nicholas Riccardi in Denver; and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.