The issue was not voter registration programs or the training of volunteer poll workers. Instead, they paid $25 each to hear panelists expound on conspiracy theories about voting machines and rigged election results. In language that sometimes leaned toward violent imagery, some panelists invited attendees to join in what they framed as a battle between good and evil. Among those in the audience was Melissa Sauder, who drove nearly 350 miles from the small western Nebraska town of Grant with her 13-year-old daughter. After years of combing the Internet, listening to podcasts and reading conservative media reports, Sauder wanted to learn more about what she believes are serious problems with the integrity of American elections. She can’t shake the belief that voting machines are rigged even in her county, where then-President Donald Trump won 85 percent of the vote in 2020. “I just don’t know the truth because it’s not open and obvious and it’s not transparent to us,” said Sauder, 38. “We trust people who trust the wrong people.” It’s a sentiment now shared by millions of people in the United States following relentless attacks on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by Trump and his allies. Nearly two years after that election, no evidence has emerged to suggest widespread fraud or manipulation, and state-by-state reviews have confirmed results that showed President Joe Biden won. Even so, the attacks and lies have had an impact: An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from 2021 found that about two-thirds of Republicans say they don’t believe Biden was legitimately elected. Events like the one held Aug. 27 in Nebraska’s largest city are one reason. Billed as the “Nebraska Election Integrity Forum,” the conference featured some of the nation’s most prominent figures promoting conspiracy theories that the last presidential election was stolen by Trump through widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines. It was just one of dozens of similar events held across the country most of the year. Despite the relatively small attendance, events are often broadcast live and recorded, ensuring they can reach a wide audience. Over eight hours with only a short lunch break, attendees were bombarded with election conspiracies, charts and presentations. Speakers spoke of tampering with voting machines or the systems that store voter rolls, ballot stuffing and huge numbers of dead and non-US citizens voting — all theories debunked. There is no evidence of widespread fraud or tampering with voting equipment that could have affected the outcome of the 2020 election, in which Biden won both the popular vote — beating the Republican incumbent by more than 7 million nationally — and the number of the Electoral College. Numerous official reviews and audits in the six battleground states where Trump disputed his loss have confirmed the validity of the results. Judges, including some appointed by Trump, have dismissed several lawsuits alleging fraud and wrongdoing. Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, and other advisers and top administration officials told him there was no evidence of widespread fraud. As part of the US House committee’s investigation into the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Barr told congressional investigators that the allegations by Trump allies surrounding the voting machines were troubling, but also “made with such impressive way they were obviously affecting a lot of people.” He added that the false allegations were doing “serious harm to the country”. Many local and state election officials said the conspiracies have already led to rampant misinformation, vitriol aimed at election officials and calls to throw out voting equipment. Trey Grayson, a Republican former secretary of state in Kentucky who is critical of conspiracy theorists, said previous election-year attacks focused on candidates or political parties, but now they target the election administration. “There are a lot of really bad actors here trying to undermine trust in a system. It’s dangerous,” he said. Despite all the evidence that the 2020 election was fair and the results accurate, conspiracy theories have convinced many Republicans otherwise — with real-world consequences. In New Mexico this year, fears of voting machine tampering led a rural county commission to threaten to vote against certifying its primary election results, even though the county clerk insisted the results were accurate. In Nevada, a rural county is pushing a plan to count its thousands of ballots by hand this November, a long and arduous process that ironically could lead to errors. At the Omaha convention, evidence of an accurate election was ignored as the speaker told attendees that the machines are rigged and the election stolen. One of the headliners at the event was Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, who said he has spent about $20 million of his own money since 2020 trying to prove voting machines were rigged in this election. and remain susceptible to falsification. Wearing jeans and a black suit jacket over a yellow T-shirt, Byrne began his presentation by saying that voting machines are vulnerable to hacking and outlining various security failures associated with them. That any technology is vulnerable, including voting machines, is not disputed. State and local election officials across the US have focused on improving their security defenses with help from the federal government. After the 2016 election, the government designated electoral systems as “critical infrastructure” — on par with the country’s banks, dams and nuclear power plants. Government and election security experts have declared the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.” But Byrne and some of the other speakers said they believe the government is corrupt and cannot be trusted. In his remarks, he complained about those who say there was no fraud in 2020 and journalists who report it, calling them “electoral fraud deniers”. He accused critics of “trying to incite violence” and later told attendees that China plans to take over the US by 2030. “I can promise, for every nice house in the United States, there’s someone in China who already has a deed to your house,” Byrne said, drawing gasps from the crowd. Another keynote speaker at the Omaha event was Douglas Frank, a math and science educator from Ohio who has been traveling the country speaking to community groups and meeting with local election officials, offering to examine and analyze their election systems. Commonly known as Dr. Frank because of his PhD in chemistry, gives off a professorial vibe with his signature bow tie and glasses. It includes his presentations of algorithms, line charts and graphs that he claims prove the election is corrupt. Frank said he has been to 43 states in the past 20 months. He had harsh words for some of those who oversee elections at the state level. “I like to tell people that we have bad secretaries of state,” Frank said. “We have some of these in our country, and it’s kind of like World War II—when the war is over, we have to have Nuremberg trials and we have to have firing squads, okay? I’m looking forward to the tests, okay?” The crowd applauded. State and local election officials have faced a barrage of harassment and death threats since the 2020 election. That has led some to resign or retire, raising concerns about a loss of experience ahead of November’s general election, along with concerns that their replacements may to seek to interfere in elections or tamper with electoral systems. Also speaking to the audience was Tina Peters, the Mesa County, Colorado, clerk who has been charged with a security breach of election systems at her election office. She claimed she had a duty to investigate and produced reports purported to show tampering with voting systems, but her claims have been dismissed by local authorities and experts. During her remarks during the teleconference, Peters questioned the integrity of judges who have rejected dozens of legal efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential results. She called on citizens to join the fight. “You can’t be afraid of going to jail,” Peters told the crowd. “They can’t take all of us. Be bold. Be courageous. The Lord is with us.” Frank, in an online post after the event, apologized for comments he made during the forum about Nebraska’s chief elections officer, Secretary of State Bob Even. Frank had called Even, a Republican, incompetent and said the official had “deluded himself” by denying Frank’s claims that the security of Nebraska’s election was in question. One of the organizers of the event was Robert Borer, who unsuccessfully challenged Evnen in the Nebraska GOP primary this year. Bohrer said he’s running because he’s convinced state election officials aren’t doing enough to address fraud and believes the 2020 election was stolen. “The whole point of this election was to unseat Trump,” he said. Since losing his bid to become the state’s top election official, Borer has launched a campaign for Nebraska governor as a write-in candidate. That means his name won’t appear on the November ballot, which, for him and his supporters, is entirely the point. “We don’t want machines counting our votes,” Borer said. “If someone casts a write-in vote, the machine has to discard it. He can’t read that vote, so he has to count it manually.” The Omaha conference was sponsored by the American…
