Lost in the shuffle of the 2026 midterms — the unprecedented mid-decade redistricting, President Trump's sagging favorability numbers and Democrats' hopes of retaking the House and potentially the Senate — is an election story that could have implications for 2028 and beyond.
In 23 states, including five presidential swing states, candidates who have denied election results are running for offices that will have a direct role in certifying future elections.
That is according to a new analysis, shared exclusively with NPR ahead of its release, by States United Action, a nonprofit that seeks to protect elections and has been tracking candidate positions on the validity of election results since 2022.
"The goal is to be able to provide voters with the most accurate information possible," said Joanna Lydgate, States United's CEO, "and understand exactly what these candidates stand for and whether they fundamentally believe in free and fair elections in this country."
In total, 39 states are holding elections this year for statewide positions that interact with elections, either for secretary of state or governor, which depending on the state has a role in administering or certifying elections, or for attorney general, which interprets and enforces election laws.
States United found at least 53 election-denying candidates are vying for those jobs at this point in the midterm cycle.
To define which candidates qualify for the title, States United tracks whether candidates meet at least one of five criteria, including whether they've falsely claimed Trump was the rightful winner in 2020 or if they've supported efforts to undermine results after audits and legal challenges were completed.
In most states, the elected position with the most direct responsibility over how elections run is secretary of state. These typically bureaucratic jobs took on new meaning in 2020, when officials from both parties faced unprecedented pressure from Trump and his allies to influence the results.
In Georgia, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger declined Trump's request to "find" 11,780 votes. In Michigan, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had armed protesters descend on her home in the weeks after voting ended.
Both swing states will elect new secretaries of state and governors this year, and both states currently have people in the running who have denied election results.
In Arizona, another presidential battleground, people who deny election results are running for all three critical statewide positions, according to States United's analysis.
In 2020, Arizona's Republican governor at the time, Doug Ducey, faced pressure from Trump to interfere in the certification process but declined to do so.
This year, however, the front-runner for the GOP nomination for governor in Arizona, Andy Biggs, voted not to certify those election results while he was serving in the U.S. House, and even made a call to a key state lawmaker at the time to investigate other ways to interfere with the process.
"We've watched these state officials on both sides of the aisle stand up and push back when Trump has tried to interfere with elections and election results in the past," Lydgate said. "We know that they will do that again. But it's incredibly important that we elect people who believe in our system and who believe in free and fair elections."
Compared with recent cycles, the number of election deniers running this year in statewide races is actually down. Lydgate attributes that to state-level candidates realizing it's a "bad campaign strategy" in places that will have competitive races come November.
"Election denial is not something that American voters like, and candidates who've run on that platform have paid a real price in the past," Lydgate said.
After the 2022 midterms, an NPR analysis found that Republican secretary of state candidates who denied the results of the 2020 election generally underperformed other GOP candidates in competitive states. A separate analysis of the same election by States United estimated the penalty for election denial to be roughly 3 percentage points.
Candidates running in states Trump won by double digits, or in crowded primaries where they are seeking Trump's endorsement, clearly aren't being dissuaded by that data however.
Brendan Fischer, who leads research into efforts to undermine elections at the Campaign Legal Center, says a powerful "election denial infrastructure" has cropped up since 2020, which has proven effective at moving candidates and lawmakers toward false theories about voting and policy responses to that misinformation.
"The election denier movement still represents a tiny, tiny minority of the country," Fischer said. "But it is an energized and active force within Republican politics. It's an organized interest group that [Republican candidates and lawmakers] need to be at least somewhat responsive to."
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