When the president is an election denier, what happens next?

It started on January 6. Where does it end?

January 6, 2021 was only the beginning of Donald Trump’s effort to seize the presidency by lying and saying the election was stolen. He launched a movement focused on denying the will of the voters. His followers spent the following four years sowing doubt on election systems and spreading conspiracies. With his return to power certified on January 6, 2025, he and his allies are positioned to use election denialism to continue their assault on local election administration and are even looking to undo democratic principles enshrined in the Constitution itself — all while Trump promises to protect his conspirators from accountability.

The remarkably smooth 2024 election should have put election denial to rest. On the contrary, the election made clear that anti-democracy actors will only accept the results if their preferred candidates win. Proponents are well organized and have stated their desire to continue to change voting laws, largely to address issues they themselves invented. The leader of the election denial movement is taking the highest office and telegraphing that he will not respect the bounds of the Constitution and its protections against tyranny. The election denial movement is not dead; it has come into power and is expanding its reach.

Laying the Groundwork to Challenge Fairness

While election deniers’ attacks on the fairness of the presidential race largely quieted as the race was quickly called, their infrastructure and tactics were evident throughout the 2024 election. They laid the groundwork to contest the election results should they dislike the outcome. They fearmongered about the integrity of voting rolls. They filed widespread lawsuits over voting methods. They challenged the validity of ballots and voters. They made a concentrated effort to recruit poll workers and poll watchers in the lead-up to the election, framed as an opportunity for concerned citizens to “fight the fraud” and “guard the vote.” During early voting, Trump and his campaign attacked normal election processes to raise skepticism about the election’s fairness while it was conducted — including multiple false claims by the incoming president that Pennsylvania was “cheating.”

Election deniers were poised to amplify mistakes and conspiracies during the early voting period. Local and national election deniers like Matthew DePerno in Michigan, RNC co-chair Lara Trump, Sidney Powell, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, and many others amplified false claims of everything from multiple voting to vote switching. Secretaries of State around the country consistently debunked these claims, some of which originated via hoaxes traced back to Russia. Nonetheless, that didn't stop the claims from flourishing on X, where Elon Musk promoted and even posted asking followers to share election denial claims.

Taken in whole, election deniers created an environment that primed supporters to believe the election was rigged should Donald Trump have lost.

Claims About Election Fairness Are Outcome Dependent

The days following the election made clear that election deniers are only willing to accept elections that their preferred candidates win. As votes were still being counted, anti-democracy actors began to attack the fairness of elections in states with split-ticket voting. As it became clear in Arizona that Trump won the state while Senate candidate Kari Lake lost, election deniers spread claims that the Senate seat was being stolen from Lake. These claims emerged in other states where down-ballot candidates underperformed in comparison to the top of the ticket, including in the Senate races in Wisconsin and Michigan. David Clements, an election denier, claimed, “So many down-ballot Republicans were screwed out of a victory. Trump won by a far greater margin than what was reported.”

In Washoe County, Nevada, Robert Beadles’ baseless accusations of election fraud helped prompt one member of the County Board of Commissioners to vote against certification and another to abstain from voting at all. Those opposing certification followed a similar rhetorical playbook to previous years: seize on administrative errors (real or imagined) to cast doubt on the fairness of elections. Fortunately, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear Beadles’ attempt to force the Washoe County officials to hear out his election denial conspiracies.

In North Carolina, election deniers worked to disqualify 60,000 ballots to change the outcome of the North Carolina Supreme Court race. The losing candidate sought to disqualify these ballots even as multiple recounts confirmed that Alison Riggs had won the election by a few hundred votes.

Contesting the 2020 Election, Again

As it became clear Trump won, some hoped that would be the end of the election denial movement. In actuality, election deniers claim that the 2024 results validate their (discredited) 2020 claims of fraud.

In Ohio, one Pickaway County Board of Elections member shared a Facebook post reading, “When God is involved, it’s too big to rig!!!!” following the 2024 election. Election deniers used the number of votes cast in 2024 to double down on their discredited claims of fake votes in the 2020 election. Responding to a graph showing the popular vote totals across recent presidential elections, an Alcona County, Michigan Canvasser wrote, “Numbers don’t lie. Globalists, however, do.” A Clark County, Ohio Board of Elections member shared a meme making a similar point that lower 2024 turnout should be considered evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.

Members of the election denial movement also used Trump’s win as an opportunity to take credit for their work. Leading election denier Cleta Mitchell thanked “election integrity warriors” following the election, adding in a separate interview they “kept a lot of the serious things that happened in 2020 from happening again.” Similarly, the Republican National Committee credited its “unprecedented election integrity program” with “stop[ping] threats to our election.”

Liberal Conspiracies

Notably, some left-leaning Trump opponents — upset about the result of the election — underwent their own form of election denial, often using the same conspiracies as established election deniers. This included skepticism over split-ticket voting, claims of hacking, and claims of millions of missing votes relative to 2020 (which, ironically, made election deniers feel vindicated). Unlike 2020, the losing candidate conceded the election and these claims were not amplified by party elites, suggesting election denial will not gain the same salience on the left.

Looking Forward

Election denial is not going away. The movement is poised to work with allies in government to further their anti-democratic goals — fueled by conspiracies about election administration they themselves created — at the federal and local level. These efforts, under the name of “election integrity,” will focus on voter ID laws, curbing mail-in and early voting periods, citizenship measures, removing voters from rolls, ending ballot curing, and condensing counting timelines. U.S. Representative Chip Roy, not an election denier himself, said earlier this year that his bill to mandate proof of citizenship to register to vote received input from election deniers Cleta Mitchell and Stephen Miller. Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo called for changes to end the state’s election law that currently allows for mail-in ballots to be received up to five days after Election Day. While he said he did not believe there was widespread fraud, he claimed the practice “creates an environment of perceived fraud, right, especially if there's certain races that flip.”

Attacks on the processes by local election officials are likely to continue. Newly-elected officials like Michigan County Clerk Victoria Bishop and Arizona County Recorder Justin Heap campaigned on election skepticism. Bishop vowed to illegally hand-count tabulated ballots. A Fulton County Board of Registration and Election member who challenged certification before the election continues to baselessly raise doubts about the process. Individual canvassing board members in seven Colorado counties voted against certification in protest of a security lapse by the Secretary of State’s office, indicating efforts to seize on administrative errors to cast doubt on the outcome continue to spread.

At the federal level, Donald Trump refused to retract his false claim about the 2020 election being stolen and is reportedly planning to use the Department of Justice to investigate his false claims of fraud. His announced nominees to lead the DOJ and FBI previously helped further these stolen election claims. Trump also suggested members of the House Select Committee focused on January 6th should be jailed and that he would pardon January 6th rioters on the “first day” – shielding those who helped Trump attempt to steal the election from accountability while punishing those who helped investigate the conspiracy. The incoming president continually criticizes the First Amendment, birthright citizenships, and other pillars of our Constitution, indicating his hostility toward the rule of law.

Election deniers spent the past four years spreading lies about our elections. Now they’re in a position to act. Informing Democracy is here to make sure these attacks against our democracy don’t go unchecked and that any officials who work to undermine our elections are held to account.