Former President Trump’s campaign to undermine the 2020 election is fueling concerns over midterm election security, with experts warning of “insider” threats from the very officials charged with guarding the vote.
Hundreds of GOP candidates in federal and state races have embraced his false claims about the election, including at least 20 Republican candidates running for secretary of state, according to an NPR analysis.
Trump’s election denial movement has raised concerns among U.S. officials and experts who fear the conspiracy theories could undermine the legitimacy of future elections.
“I think that’s kind of a new element to the threat landscape of elections,” said William Adler, a senior technologist in elections and democracy at the Center for Democracy & Technology. “I think that the new risk is the risk of insider threats.”
Arizona is among the states where false claims about the 2020 election are the center of this year’s campaigns.
Trump has endorsed Arizona state representative Mark Finchem, who attended ‘Stop the Steal’ rallies in January, for secretary of state. Finchem was also among several Republican politicians who attended a QAnon conference in Las Vegas last fall.
Finchem’s opponent, Shawnna Bolick, is also an election skeptic. In early 2021, she introduced a bill that would allow Arizona lawmakers to overturn election results, by a simple majority, in response to fraud claims. Her bill later died in committee.
“There is a conscious campaign of...
"Anura brother (elder sibling), making a system change," reads a Sinhala-language Facebook post shared on April 27, 2026, referring to Dissanayake. The post includes an image that appears to show ...