Republican Party efforts to disrupt the 2024 United States presidential election

Fox News agreed to pay a $787.5 million settlement to Dominion in April 2023 after it was revealed that top on-air personalities and executives knew the allegations were false but continued to promote them anyway.

[20] By April 2024, dozens of Republicans in four states were under indictment for their alleged involvement in the Trump fake electors plot and related Pence Card conspiracy, parts of wide-ranging efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

[22] In September 2024, Hanna Rosin published an article about the aftermath of the January 6 attack in the lives of the insurrectionists, which mentions how they have created "a new mythology on the right", which could lead to a new attempt at overturning the election should Trump lose it.

[36][37] The New York Times reported in July 2024 that "the Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system" by systematically searching for vulnerabilities.

[44] Mike Lindell stated that his goal is to remove voting machines entirely and switch to paper ballots, a process that election officials warned would be tedious, time-consuming and prone to errors.

[33] CNN reported that in text messages to Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, which conducted the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit, Michael Flynn expressed a goal to "fundamentally change the way votes are counted at the state level".

"[48] In December 2022, election experts sent a letter to the United States Department of Justice that described a "multi-state conspiracy to copy voting software" that was at least partially funded by notable Trump supporters such as Sidney Powell and asking for a federal investigation.

[53] Election Systems & Software (ES&S) was founded by Republicans,[54] was financed by the families of Howard Ahmanson Jr. and Nelson Bunker Hunt,[55] is owned by a private equity firm, McCarthy Group,[56] and its investors are unknown as of December 2019.

"[87] Other security vulnerabilities - including missing firewall security patches, outdated SFTP server software, remote-access software, outdated operating systems, exposed passwords, exposed data of registered voters, no logging of some events, hash verification issues (noting that the hash verification was performed by ES&S instead of its customers), ballot marking device/scanner "hybrid" systems that can be changed with fake votes on machine-marked ballots after those ballots are cast, accessible SD and USB ports, plain text encryption keys for voter data, no set BIOS passwords, disabled Secureboot, presence of bloatware, no tamper-evident seals, immediate root access, unencrypted hard drives, use of simple default passwords, and "poor physical security protections that could allow undetected tampering"[88] - were also reported.

[87][89][90][61][70][91][92][54][93][94] A December 2020 investigation by DCReport found that the 2020 re-elections of Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins had all occurred in states where votes were primarily tabulated by ES&S, arguing that their wins were improbable due to low or close pre-election polls.

[97] A 2021 article also noted that several Republican officials had refused to purchase equipment from Dominion due to false claims of fraud during the 2020 United States presidential election, alleging that ES&S would benefit by increasing its market share.

[129][130][131][132] By 2023, organizations funded by dark money had met quietly with officials in Republican-controlled states to create an incubator of policies that would restrict ballot access and amplify false claims that fraud is rampant in elections.

Led by the Heritage Foundation, the groups include the Honest Elections Project, which is among a network of conservative organizations associated with Leonard Leo, a longtime prominent figure in the Federalist Society.

Voting rights activists were concerned that the continuing false allegations of election fraud since 2020 might lead to social unrest if efforts to delay certifications at the local level were overruled by state officials or courts.

The group was funded by multiple Republican megadonors associated with Trump, and had successfully spread conspiracy theories about voting with several right-wing media outlets and had installed activists on election boards and thousands as poll monitors and workers.

Adams started a lawsuit, backed by the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute (AFPI), seeking a court ruling to grant election board members more discretion in certifications.

[144] The group is part of the Citizens Outreach Foundation,[185] which attempted to purge 11,000 people from Washoe County, Nevada voter rolls in 2024, a move that the ACLU said violated state and federal law due to being requested within 90 days of the upcoming election.

[204][205][206] Elon Musk, owner of X, has used his account with 197 million followers to post false or misleading information about the election, notably the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, contending Democrats are intentionally "importing" undocumented migrants to vote.

Election officials dismissed Schlapp's premise; Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes remarked, "the whole thing is an absurd sham to cover up direct efforts to intimidate voters by a bunch of CPAC-recruited vigilantes.

This included planning to quickly debunk misinformation, deescalate conflicts and improve coordination with federal, state, and local law enforcement to better respond to harassment, threats and potential violence.

[221][222] Ivan Raiklin, a close Michael Flynn associate, addressed an October 2024 Rod of Iron Ministries Freedom Festival, urging attendees to "confront" their state representatives with "evidence of the illegitimate steal" should Trump lose.

[223][224] Asked by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on October 13 whether he was "expecting chaos on Election Day" by "outside agitators" such as migrants or terrorists, Trump replied, "I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within", referencing "radical left lunatics".

[230] Joshua Dyck of the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts Lowell said that "Republicans are clearly strategically putting polling into the information environment to try to create perceptions that Trump is stronger.

[264][265][257] Journalists speculated that the withdrawal of editorial board endorsements for Kamala Harris in October 2024 by the owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times were an attempt to appease Trump if he won the election.

[256][260] Several Republican Party politicians and operatives have ties to websites that have been considered by misinformation researchers and journalists to spread false information, especially about climate change, prejudice against marginalized groups, COVID-19 or the 2020 United States presidential election, including The Epoch Times,[267][268][269][270] The Western Journal,[271][272][273][274] and Breitbart.

[284] In 2022, under pressure from Republican politicians and right-wing activists, the United States Department of Homeland Security shut down the Disinformation Governance Board and canceled a project with a non-profit to track death threats targeting election workers.

[288] Mark Warner characterized the committee as a "concerted effort by partisan actors to intimidate and silence" misinformation researchers and expressed concern that its actions could hamper countering foreign disinformation and interference in the 2024 elections.

[298] By March 2024, The New York Times reported that Trump and his allies had "unquestionably prevailed" in their efforts to stop collaboration between social media companies, the Biden administration, and academic researchers to protect against election disinformation.

Between 2021 and 2024, high-profile Republican figures and supporters such as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, the Republican National Committee, Colton Moore, Matt Maddock and Mark Robinson; right-wing outlets or social media accounts such as Fox News, One America News Network and Libs of TikTok and organizations such as Gays Against Groomers have been repeatedly accused of promoting or enabling on mass media conspiracy theories (including false claims of fraud during the 2020 United States presidential election), lies, dehumanization (such as anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, xenophobia and antisemitism), demonization of political opponents and/or threats of violence (including threats of assassination and civil war), all as a form of stochastic terrorism.

"[393] The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2024 that Musk had been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin, Sergey Kiriyenko, and other high ranking Russian government officials since late 2022, discussing personal topics, business and geopolitical matters.