KAREN GREENBERG; kgreenberg@law.fordham.edu
Greenberg is the director of the Center of National Security at Fordham Law. She is the co-editor of Our Nation at Risk: Election Integrity as a National Security Issue.
Greenberg told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “Election denialism has actually worked against the Republican Party in some significant ways. It drove people like Liz Cheney to say that we can’t support this kind of manipulation of the election process and environment.
“The Trump team is using many tactics [to further] election denialism. In Michigan, it looked like some voters had voted more than once. Election deniers are looking for ways to deny the results. Whether it’s about election fraud, or something wrong with the process, or intimidation, these are all attempts––before, on Election Day, and in the aftermath––to say that the results of this election can be denied. The reports from Michigan alerts us to the fact that these groups are watching for anything they can find and not waiting to find out whether it’s valid or invalid. The Michigan case shows that people are watching for any fault line or possible impropriety. We’re also seeing reports of election deniers being on election boards.
“If you look at all the things being done to disrupt, dismantle, or dissuade people about the election results, it is all about voter suppression: keeping people we don’t want to vote from voting. The election officials are attentive to this. It’s astounding how much the issues we’re dealing with now have manifested in other ways incrementally over time. At some point, we were going to have to deal with these threats to election security as a country. We could have gone further, like by enacting the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. But we need to keep the focus on election security beyond this election.
“The number of safeguards that have been put in place are quite robust. They’re not perfect, but we’re in a different category than [in prior years]. We know that polling sites need to be protected, and we’re more aware of foreign and malign influences. The whole story needs to be told.
Greenberg added: “It’s go-time. A lot of the emphasis has been on getting out the vote and getting people registered and canvassing and helping others vote. For a long time, we’ve been told that if we want to be safe and secure, this is on us [the public]. The ultimate message is that it’s up to the voters. It’s up to federal, state, and local government to make this process as lawful and procedurally correct as possible in every way––but it’s on voters to vote.
“There’s also a general consensus that we’re not going to know the results until the end of the week. Most people don’t remember that in 2020, we didn’t really know until the end of the week. There’s a sense that it may be more complicated this time because of election denialism. If there were a big victory either way, we are going to know sooner rather than later.”