The push by Republicans to conduct partisan ballot reviews similar to the one that unfolded last year in Arizona has spread beyond the battleground states where former President Donald Trump disputed his loss, an effort that has had mixed legislative success but has sown doubts about whether future elections can be trusted. While most of the bills are unlikely to become law, the debates and public hearings in GOP-controlled state legislative chambers have added fuel to the false claims that widespread fraud cost Trump reelection in 2020. “They’re really tearing down democracy, and they don’t think they are,” said Scott McDonell, the election clerk in Dane County, Wisconsin, home to the state capital. The proposals come after flawed Republican-ordered reviews in Arizona and Wisconsin where GOP lawmakers gave the job of examining the previous election to partisan actors. In Arizona, the contract went to a Florida-based firm with no previous experience in election audits but with a CEO who had expressed support for conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 presidential results. In Wisconsin, the Republican leader of the state Assembly appointed a retired state Supreme Court justice who declared the election stolen even before he began his review. Similar efforts are being pursued by Republicans in the presidential battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, also won by Biden. More than a dozen bills have been introduced this year in seven other states proposing similar reviews of elections and election results, including in states Trump won such as Florida, Missouri and Tennessee, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks such efforts. That comes after legislation was introduced in eight states last year to review the 2020 results and 12 states considered bills to perform new review processes for future elections. “It’s really not clear to me that there’s any realistic, legitimate audit that can be done that will satisfy some of the folks who are calling for this,” said Wisconsin state Rep. Mark Spreitzer, a Democrat and member of the Assembly’s elections committee. “If I thought there was some additional check we could do that would give voters more confidence, we’d do it.” Forty-four states already conduct some type of postelection audit or take other steps — outlined in state law or through administrative procedures — to verify the accuracy of vote tallies, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The six states with no such requirements are Alabama, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire and South Dakota. Those states likely have some kind of canvassing process where election officials certify the results, but there is no check on the voting equipment itself, said Jennifer Morrell, a former elections clerk in Colorado and Utah who now advises state and local election officials. Bills calling for partisan election reviews have found little success, which is due partly to Republican lawmakers who have criticized the 2020 conspiracy theories and defended their state’s elections. In South Dakota, the Republican-controlled House last month passed a measure to require in-depth reviews of ballots and voting equipment in close presidential elections. Several House Republicans had attended a conference held by MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell in Sioux Falls last year during which he attempted to prove that voting equipment had been hacked, and the lawmakers echoed those claims during debate. The bill was later rejected by […]

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