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Dear John,
In this election year, the nation is still reeling from the ongoing efforts of influential politicians taking their cues from Donald Trump to continue to deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
According to research from States United, about one third of the current members of the House and Senate are election deniers -- 171 members all told, representing 36 states, both red and blue. The state houses are just as overrun: according to ElectionDeniers.org, 25 election deniers hold statewide office in 19 states, and 12 more are currently on statewide ballots.
Oh and lest we forget, two -- Trump and DeSantis -- are running for President.
Among the most vocal election deniers making media appearances are Reps. Elise Stefanik and Scott Perry, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Election deniers are determined to undermine our confidence in democracy, softening the ground for their wished-for future President to live his dictator-for-a-day fantasies, and enabling Trump and the GOP to maintain an authoritarian grip on power indefinitely.
It’s past time to stop putting misinformation on the air. Tell the TV news networks to stop allowing election deniers to spread their lies on broadcast and cable television now.
If you listen to Republican leadership in the House, it doesn’t take long to hear their lies and misinformation.
Rep. Elise Stefanik is among the most vocal of the election deniers. In her recent “Meet the Press” appearance, she complained of “bias” in the media and said she would not commit to certifying the upcoming 2024 election results. Stoking the insurrectionist base she said, “I have concerns about the treatment of Jan. 6 hostages.”
Rep. Scott Perry, chair of the extremist Freedom Caucus, is also an election denier. He sits on the powerful House Oversight Committee, charged with responsibility for House investigations. He introduced Trump to Jeffrey Clark, architect of the plot to send a slate of fake electors to Washington if the coup had been successful on January 6.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, an election denier, is the second highest-ranking Republican to sign onto a Supreme Court lawsuit challenging the last election. He was one of over 100 members of Congress who joined an amicus brief attempting to invalidate the electoral votes from pivotal swing states, throwing out the votes of tens of millions of Americans in 2020.
Then there’s Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, the most powerful election denier in the country. He led the Supreme Court amicus brief seeking to invalidate votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin -- enough to install the man who lost the Presidency. As Speaker of the House, one of his first acts was to announce that he would protect the January 6 rioters by hiding their identities in January 6 footage released to the media.
Why should we care now about what these election deniers have to say about what happened in 2020?
It’s all too easy to see them denying a Trump loss in 2024 as well. Even though Congress has passed a new law increasing the threshold for objecting to a state’s electoral votes to one-fifth of the members, this threshold can be easily met by the 147 House members who voted against certification last time. In the Senate, only one more vote would be needed over the 19 who denied the outcome previously.
Still worse, if no candidate wins the 270 electoral vote majority, it’s thrown to the House where each state gets one vote. 36 states are represented by election deniers, and only 26 states would be needed to throw out the votes of tens of millions of Americans.
Election deniers in Congress could also defund prosecutions of January 6 rioters; they could starve the budgets of agencies that protect the 2024 election; they could initiate unwarranted investigations against election administrators. They could refuse to confirm judges and officials who don’t deny the election, and they will certainly continue to spread the lies and further erode the public’s trust.
Enough is enough. Democracy is at stake. Tell the TV news networks, broadcast and cable, to stop putting misinformation and lies about the 2020 election on the air now.
Thank you for staying alert to the threat and helping to protect American democracy.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
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