Election Deniers Seek to Rewrite the Law

In the conspiracy-soaked aftermath of the 2020 election, far-right activists clamored to inspect ballots based on elaborate — and false — theories.

In Georgia, election deniers pushed for a review that might detect counterfeit ballots because they were not folded, appeared to be marked by a machine or were printed on different card stock. In Arizona, auditors were on the hunt for bamboo fibers in ballots to prove that they had fraudulently came from Asia.

Those theories were roundly rebuked, without a shred — or fiber — of evidence to support them. National attention from voters and the mainstream news media eventually shifted to the 2024 election.

But one bill introduced in the Georgia House of Representatives seeks to address those very concerns.

The bill, which was passed in committee, would require the secretary of state’s office to post high-resolution digital images of scanned paper ballots online and keep them there for 24 months, a demand of conspiracy theorists in 2021. (Similar bills regarding ballot scans have come out of committee in the New Hampshire and Arizona Legislatures.)

More than three years after the 2020 election, the lies and falsehoods about President Biden’s victory persist, and they continue to influence efforts to pass election laws across the country. In addition to the bill working its way through the Georgia Legislature, more than 70 bills in at least 25 states draw some connection to conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to a review of data from the Voting Rights Lab, a group that tracks voting legislation.

Those theories include falsehoods about the security of ballot drop boxes and voting by undocumented citizens, as well as questions about fraudulent absentee ballots and