CNN: Republican candidates back Trump’s election lies across the 2021 and 2022 maps
07.6.2021 / By Eric Bradner, Sara Murray and Ben Krolowitz
CNN: Republican candidates back Trump's election lies across the 2021 and 2022 maps
(CNN) – Republican candidates in a spate of 2021 races and in the 2022 midterms are increasingly focusing their campaigns on the baseless claim that voter fraud was a rampant problem in the 2020 election.
Some GOP contenders are still falsely asserting that former President Donald Trump was robbed of victory last year — a lie Trump himself has told at rallies he has held in recent weeks that have focused largely on his attempts to settle old scores and elevate Republicans who are willing to amplify his falsehoods.
Dozens of Republicans campaigning on Trump’s election lies are seeking statewide offices that would give them authority over how elections are conducted and which ballots are counted. Others are running for congressional and state legislative seats, where they could shape voting laws.
But experts disagreed, saying that Williams and other Republicans making bigger promises are ultimately trafficking in the same lies about election fraud.
“It might be more palatable and that might just be with the way they’ve learned to sell themselves, but it really is coming from the same place,” said Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections for the good-government group Common Cause.