Election results slow the election-denier movement, giving common sense some traction; Arizona the prime example

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs' win in the Arizona governor's race over 2020 election denier Kari Lake was good news for voting rights activists and election officials from the biggest states to the smallest localities. Had Lake won, she promised to further "dismantle" voting processes. "The recent election was very bad for the election denier movement, and [Hobbs] completed the bad news," write Brookings Institution senior fellows Elaine Kamarck and Norman Eisen. "Arizona is the state where deniers searched for bamboo fibers in ballots that had supposedly been dropped into Phoenix by the Chinese. It is also the state where a non-governmental, privately funded recount ended up finding even more votes for Joe Biden."

A review of candidate revealed "341 candidates running on a platform of election denial," they write. "All in all, the statistics for election deniers are far worse when it comes to swing states. Almost all of the successes were in red or deep-red states. In purple places, including Michigan and Wisconsin, (not to mention blue ones) the election deniers running for statewide office were wiped out, with the sole remaining undetermined attorney general race in Arizona." It also helped that elections around the nation ran smoothly, as The New York Times reports.

When races are tighter, tensions run deeper and common sense and cool heads are needed, so election officials can do their jobs without interference, Kamarck and Eisen write: "Not all election deniers are equal. The statewide offices, and secondarily, the state legislators, have more power to affect election administration than do members of Congress. And the prospect of election deniers in office is much more dangerous in swing states. . . which is why the election denier movement, while not limited to swing states, had its greatest appeal among Trump’s followers in states where the 2020 presidential election was close. Following his loss in the 2020 election, Donald Trump fought hard to create doubts about the vote in an effort to affect the choice of electors and the Congress—which is why passage of the Electoral Count Act is so important." Parts of the 1887 law laying out the process for Congress to count electoral votes are vague, and a revision is pending in the Senate.