Republicans’ New Go-To Strategy Is Claiming Election Fraud

Larry Elder taking a page out of Trump’s playbook is a sign of shadiness to come

Photo: Francine Orr/Getty Images

When a political party morphs into a cult of personality themed around an unchecked deranged buffoon who can’t accept defeat and is prone to conspiracy, no one should be surprised that those who seek to follow in his footsteps employ similar political candidacy scams.

Even before Tuesday’s gubernatorial recall election in California was held, its GOP front-runner, Larry Elder, was already both conceding the race and claiming he lost due to voter fraud. On Monday, Elder called on his supporters to use an online form to report fraud, which claimed it had “detected fraud” in the “results” of the California recall election “resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor.” The site claims the discovery of this information was via “statistical analyses used to detect fraud in elections held in 3rd-world nations (such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran).” Insert racist, xenophobic spooky music here.

The page also suggested voters may turn to the “ammo box” if they can’t trust the ballot box. Insert genuine fear of violent White folks with guns here. (And a tip box.)

Unfortunately for the candidate, given it was Monday, the day before the election was held and any votes were counted, this all made even less sense than it did on its surface. All I got from that reporting of the Elder campaign’s goofy claims about election fraud is that Elder is so lazy about this election that he couldn’t even be bothered to lie about election fraud before the election happened. But that didn’t prevent Elder to shamelessly continue to soil the minds of people about the looming election results.

In an interview with NBC News conducted that same day, Elder repeatedly refused to say whether he’d accept the results of Tuesday’s recall election.

“Let’s all work together to find out whether or not the election tomorrow is a fair election,” Elder repeated each time when pressed for an answer.

It’s clear where Elder is taking his cues from.

Last week, when asked about the California recall election during an interview with Newsmax…