What Went Down At The California Recall Election: Live Results

Indeed. I do wonder if there is a long-term consequence like what you’re suggesting, Micah. If the playbook for the GOP going forward is to raise the specter of election fraud after (or, evidently, before) any election with an outcome that’s unfavorable to them, after a while that will further erode faith in the electoral process. And then I wonder if Republican voters will bother showing up to the polls. What’s the point of casting a ballot in a “rigged” election?

Oh, that’s interesting, Kaleigh. I guess I wonder how big that pretty-far-down-the-rabbit-hole group is, though. I would think it’s not nearly as big as Republican voters who believe in fraud in the abstract but aren’t trading detailed conspiracies online. And it’s that latter group that I would imagine perhaps not turning out if a candidate’s campaign tells them the result is predetermined.

This is a textbook example from a Telegram user posting in the chatroom for a QAnon influencer who has close to 100,000 followers on the chat app. This illustrates the perspective of many on the right nicely:

The thinking is that the fraud occurs in many different ways but that the audits and reviews will count the real votes, which Republicans still need to cast today so the “right” result will be revealed eventually.