During the 2024 United States presidential election, the Republican Party attempted to stunt voter access, election oversight, and post-election certification. They also attempted to use strategies to modify voting laws and to place partisan figures in Republican-led states in order to restrict demographics more likely to vote Democratic. These efforts have been promoted using alarmist claims about election integrity, many of which trace back to the election denial movement in the United States.

Numerous court cases challenged the voting process and aimed to set precedents for handling election disputes. Proponents contend that these measures ensure election security; critics argue they erode public trust in election fairness and undermine the democratic process.

Background

Republicans have a history of voter intimidation, disinformation, and dark money influence during presidential elections, with incidents ranging from the possible sabotage of Vietnam War peace talks in 1968 to the swiftboating of John Kerry in 2004, notwithstanding the 2000 Volusia error. The Republican Party belongs to the International Democracy Union (IDU), a global group "dedicated to providing mutual support to center-right, establishment parties around the world". Its assistant chairman, Mike Roman, was indicted in Georgia for conspiring to steal the U.S. 2020 election.

Grievances

For decades, Republicans sought evidence of electoral fraud; multiple mainstream media experts found that such fraud is very rare. Heritage claimed to have found more than 1,500 instances of fraud over 42 years (a relatively negligible amount); an analysis led by the Brennan Center for Justice assessed that Heritage's findings were an exaggeration and that there were far fewer instances of voter fraud in that 42 year interval. In April 2024, according to the Associated Press, there was not even one single instance of voting by a noncitizen.

After his 2016 win, Trump blamed undocumented migrants for losing the popular vote. In 2017, he established a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to investigate voter fraud, improper registration, and voter suppression; it was disbanded a year later, with Matthew Dunlap writing to Mike Pence and Kris Kobach that the commission found nothing substantial.

In July 2017 and August 2018, critics at the Washington Post and CNN alleged that the commission was intended to disenfranchise or deter legal voters and found no evidence of widespread voter fraud, respectively. Kobach has a history of making false or unsubstantiated allegations of voting fraud to advocate for voting restrictions.

After his 2020 loss, Trump alleged that the election had been rigged, a narrative known as his big lie. A movement emerged to advance this narrative, with right-wing media promoting fraud allegations, including conspiracy theories that voting machines had been rigged. In response, Dominion and Smartmatic filed defamation lawsuits; Fox News agreed to settle for $787.5 million after it was revealed that top on-air personalities and executives knew they promoted baseless allegations. In 2000 Mules, Dinesh D'Souza accused Democratic operatives of ballot collecting across five swing states during the 2020 election; he apologized for his allegations in 2024.

Money

Between 2020 and 2022, over 3,500 foundations and high net-worth donors provided over $1 billion to about 150 nonprofit organizations that supported voter suppression activities. By 2023, organizations funded by dark money had met quietly with officials in Republican-controlled states to create and foster policies that would restrict ballot access and amplify false claims that fraud is rampant in elections.

Elon Musk contributed at least $260 million to efforts to re-elect Trump; he also funded Building America's Future since 2022, and has also given money to Citizens for Sanity through that network. Building America's Future also funded the Fair Election Fund, which paid $75,000 in bounties for alleged election fraud claims and promised to publicize them.

Purges

Paul Weyrich justified vote restriction in a 1980 speech: "our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down". The Brennan Center determined that nearly 16 million voters were removed by states between 2014 and 2016. Crosscheck has been criticized by journalists and researchers for poor accuracy. Greg Palast estimated that 1.1 million voters were removed from voter rolls by the 2016 election, overly purging voters of color. Following Trump's 2020 loss, Republican lawmakers initiated a sweeping effort to make voting laws more restrictive in several states and to take control of the administrative management of elections at the state and local level.

By 2021, GOP election activists prioritized "radical incrementalism", suggesting step-by-step legislative revisions instead of seeking broad policy changes. Cleta Mitchell, who participated in the Trump–Raffensperger phone call to change the certified 2020 Georgia election, launched in 2021 the Election Integrity Network (EIN) to recruit, train and deploy aggressively observant poll watchers in key states. The Election Integrity Act of 2021 in Georgia (SB 202) allows people to file an unlimited number of challenges to voter registrations in the state; Brad Raffensperger said that challenges ensured voter integrity. Bee Nguyen said SB 202 bypassed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993; it could also violate the Civil Rights Act and Ku Klux Klan Act. By November 2022, almost 150,000 challenges had been filed, primarily against young or Black voters. No charges of fraud were made. EIN collaborated with the Election Transparency Initiative, headed by Ken Cuccinelli.

In 2022 recordings, National Election Integrity director Josh Findlay said that the Republican National Committee (RNC) would support efforts to provide EIN staff, organization, and "muscle" in key states. Zoom meetings showed coordination between the EIN, the RNC, four Republican secretaries of state, and a dozen state legislatures to deploy vigilantes and spread conspiracy theories in right-wing media. In North Carolina, Republican state legislators passed a law to split the state board of elections and local county boards evenly between the Democratic and Republican parties; Roy Cooper criticized the law for potentially causing stalemates. In Texas, Republican state legislators passed two laws that targeted Harris County.

By September 2021, at least 8,500 vigilantes were recruited but not always screened: some openly supported QAnon, joined January 6, or defended the militia movement. This strategy was used by the RNC to connect new poll workers with local party attorneys. Many have attempted to push out higher-ranking officials who did not. By April 2024, the Republican Party was largely controlled by the election denial movement, with Trump campaign personnel taking leadership roles in the RNC.

Hacks

Election security experts and journalists have warned about security vulnerabilities and other flaws in the election infrastructure. Three vendors dominate election technology in the United States, limiting the ability for election officials to replace an existing system.

At an August 2021 event organized by Mike Lindell, copies of software from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Colorado and Michigan were distributed and posted to the public Internet. 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. Electronic pollbooks, ballot scanners, servers for vote counting, USB flash drives, and memory cards were also copied in Coffee County, Georgia. Voting experts expressed alarm over the breaches due to their breaking of the chain of custody over ballots and tabulators; as well as invasion of voter privacy. 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 Trump supporters and asked for a federal investigation.

In August 2023, Matthew DePerno, the former Republican nominee for the 2022 Michigan Attorney General election, and former Republican state representative Daire Rendon were charged with "undue possession of a voting machine, willfully damaging a voting machine and conspiracy". DePerno spread false claims about the 2020 United States presidential election. In December 2023, a follow-up open letter from computer scientists, election security experts and voter advocacy organizations listed repeated attempts by allies of Trump to access voting system software in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and Colorado, again calling for a federal investigation, noting that the software is used nationwide.

The America Project, founded in 2021 by Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne, said it would roll out "state-of-the-art election tools" that would include artificial intelligence. CNN reported that Flynn expressed a goal to "fundamentally change the way votes are counted at the state level" in text messages to Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, which conducted the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit.

The America Project is staffed by prominent election deniers and funds another project, One More Mission, that seeks to recruit tens of thousands of people with military and law enforcement experience to monitor polling places. The Intercept reported in April 2020 that during a February strategy session attended by conservative donors and activists, Englebrecht said that "you get some SEALs in those polls and they're going to say, 'No, no, this is what it says. This is how we're going to play this show.' That's what we need. We need people who are unafraid to call it like they see it." Several attendees specifically cited this need for "inner city" and predominantly Native American polling precincts.

Backsliding

In 2018, David Frum said the Republican platform "can't prevail in democratic competition". He also wrote that "if conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."

Between 2021 and 2024, Trump, high-profile right-wing figures, supporters, and media outlets have been accused of promoting conspiracy theories, lies, dehumanization, demonization of political opponents, threats of violence, as well as forms of stochastic terrorism. Mike Pompeo endorsed violent PAC recruitment ads; Paul Gosar released a viral video glorifying a death threat.

The Atlantic argues that white flight in the 1960s and 1970s as well as the rise of white suburban evangelicals were both crucial to these activities. Republican Bob Inglis and journalist David Corn have compared the resulting electoral system to "apartheid".

As part of one of the 2022 break-out sessions, the Dallas CPAC conference displayed a banner across their main stage with the phrase "We are all domestic terrorists." Solomon Peña was convicted for the 2022-2023 shootings at the homes of four Arizona Democratic officials, including the state House speaker.

Journalists and political science experts have accused Republicans of displaying anti-democratic attitudes and behaviors.

In the 2020 cycle, Republicans have stopped many voting rights legislations using filibuster; Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) have allowed it to happen.