NYT: How Trump's 2020 Election Lies have gripped state legislatures

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Legislators in Florida and North Carolina did not face as much pressure to overturn the election because Mr. Trump carried both states. In Nevada, Democrats control the Legislature, and though the state Republican Party pushed for alternate electors, no legislators took action.


These fictions about rigged elections and widespread fraud have provided the foundation for new laws that make it harder to vote and easier to insert partisanship in the vote count. In three states, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, state lawmakers successfully pushed for investigations that sowed doubt about the results and tested the boundaries of their oversight.

And yet The Times’s analysis also shows that these efforts have encountered significant resistance from key Republican figures, as well as Democrats. In most states, the lawmakers who challenged the 2020 results do not yet have the numbers, or the support of governors, secretaries of state or legislative leaders, to achieve their most audacious aims.

They have advanced, but not enacted, legislation that would make it easier for politicians to overturn elections. And it is only a minority of Republican lawmakers who promote the legally dubious view that they — and not the votes of the people — can select the electors who formally cast a ballot for the president in the Electoral College.

Election and democracy experts say they see the rise of anti-democratic impulses in statehouses as a clear, new threat to the health of American democracy. State legislatures hold a unique position in the country’s democratic apparatus, wielding a constitutionally mandated power to set the “times, places and manner of holding elections.” Cheered on by Mr. Trump as he eyes another run for the White House in 2024, many state legislators have shown they see that power as license to exert greater control over the outcome of elections.

In an interview with The Times, Mr. Trump acknowledged that in deciding whom to endorse in state legislative races, he is looking for candidates who want state legislatures to have a say in naming presidential electors — a position that could let politicians short-circuit the democratic process and override the popular vote.

“In 2020, the plan of Trump and his allies hinged ultimately on getting state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters,” said Ben Berwick, a counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group. “If past is prologue, that same strategy is likely to be central to efforts to subvert an election in the future.”

The Times’s review provides only a glimpse of the ways that state legislatures fueled the movement to deny and challenge the 2020 results. The analysis focused on concrete actions and did not include lawmakers’ posts on social media or statements they made in campaign speeches.

Some legislators who were among the most vociferous in their support of subverting the election have tried to use their 2020 efforts as a springboard to higher office, all while still pledging to further remove democratic guardrails.

Doug Mastriano, the Republican state senator from Pennsylvania who won his party’s nomination for governor on Tuesday, has pushed the Justice Department to investigate debunked election conspiracies, held a legislative hearing with members of Mr. Trump’s legal team and promised to enact new voting restrictions if elected. Mark Finchem, a Republican state representative in Arizona who has pursued the dubious theory of election decertification, is a candidate for secretary of state in Arizona.

Mr. Trump’s defeat was undisputed among election officials and certified by Democratic and Republican secretaries of state, with slates of electors signed by Democratic and Republican governors. None of the many recounts or audits altered the outcome. Mr. Trump’s Department of Justice found no evidence of widespread fraud. Mr. Trump lost more than 50 of his post-election challenges in court.

His campaign to overturn the defeat played out differently across the states. Mr. Trump won Florida and had no reason to pressure lawmakers to agitate over the result, though they used distrust in the election as justification for new voting restrictions. But in Texas, another state Mr. Trump won, the deeply conservative Legislature was eager to show voters it was taking action and lawmakers introduced a bill that included provisions to overturn results in future elections.