Electoral deniers are running for office. Officials say their core proposals are unworkable.

Allegations of voter fraud have not stood up to scrutiny in court, but that hasn’t stopped accusations of irregularities or calls for reform. This election cycle, a handful of hard-core deniers — those who believe the 2020 election was not legitimate or promote falsehoods or conspiracies about election integrity — are running for state or local office, particularly positions that control election administration.

The nonpartisan nonprofit organization States United Action names 12 candidates for statewide offices that influence elections (governor, secretary of state and attorney general) as “denialists.” It says there are already 26 of them in office in 19 states.

It is harder to see inside the more than 10,000 local entities that administer elections, but an investigation by Rolling Stone And American Doom found 70 deniers already in local office in the key states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Election deniers in November believe the way we conduct future elections needs to change, but experts say their proposals may not calm the waters they have stirred.

Getting rid of the machines

Changing the way votes are cast and counted is a central plank of the election deniers’ platform. In the recent Florida primary, a coalition of 13 “America First” candidates ran to represent the Republican Party in the race for election supervisor. Six who share these goals made it through.

Everyone in the coalition agrees on three things, says Jeff Buongiorno, a candidate in Palm Beach County: one day of voting, paper ballots and a hand recount. Buongiorno’s bio lists a wealth of IT knowledge and experience, but he is deeply distrustful of election machines. He calls the county’s new equipment and processing facilities “an eyesore” and believes election officials are using their bulletproof windows to protect themselves from the consequences of their misconduct.

Buongiorno says votes should be counted by hand at the precinct level and the tally reported to the mayor and city council. They would approve the result and send it to the Board of Elections. This decentralized approach would “bring the counting and tabulation of votes back to the politicians closest to the people, who know the community best,” he says.

This approach may seem plausible to someone who has not monitored the vote count, but less so to those who have.

“We are absolutely opposed to hand recounts,” says Wesley Wilcox, the supervisor of elections in Marion County, Florida, since 2012. After the recent primary, his county commissioner asked him to do a “hand audit” as a check. It took 10 of his trained workers two and a half hours to count a single contest out of 1,400 ballots in a quiet, controlled environment, Wilcox says.

“I can’t imagine that being done with a high degree of accuracy,” Wilcox says of the county’s hand-counting of every vote. The average age of its poll workers is 65. Asking them to stay when the polls close and count dozens of items on thousands of ballots after they’ve already worked 14 hours won’t increase accuracy, he says.

Plus, he would need four times as many poll workers to complete a recount in a reasonable amount of time — workers he is required by law to pay. A quadrupled budget isn’t the only challenge. “I can barely find the people we need right now,” Wilcox says. Beyond this, the facilities he uses as polling places aren’t big enough to accommodate four times as many workers.

Studies of hand recounts have shown that they are unreliable; results can be inaccurate in up to 58 percent of cases. A “test” hand recount in Nye County, Nevada, during the 2022 primary (along with a machine recount) had a 25 percent error rate and was not completed by the deadline. Hand recounts can only be verified by another hand recount and cannot undergo the rigorous pre-election testing required of voting machines.

Not surprisingly, parties’ confidence in the accuracy of elections has shifted based on the success of presidential candidates.

Just one day

Some deniers want to stop the counting of votes on Election Day, suspicious of the changes to races after the election, when mail-in and absentee ballots are counted. The Florida coalition wants voting on just one day. Voting any time other than Election Day is unconstitutional, Buongiorno says, citing a lower court ruling in Delaware that was overturned by its Supreme Court.

Florida, a state that is a destination for retirees, has a large number of voters who rely on early voting. A one-day requirement would mean twice as many polling places and staff, Wilcox says. It’s already difficult to find available locations on Tuesdays with ample parking and that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Chris Gleeson, another member of the coalition, lost his bid for Pinellas County. However, he has filed a lawsuit alleging that the election was fraudulent. His lawsuit is based on his observation that more than 200,000 applications for mail-in ballots were processed in a single day, a Sunday.

Wilcox is not aware of Gleeson’s complaint or the inner workings of another county, but notes that many voters request a mail-in ballot for each election. These requests are processed in batches, and a Sunday is typically a good time to use so much computing power.

Florida’s deniers will have to earn their seats. In Michigan, three candidates are running unopposed for county seats.

No appetite

Calls to get rid of tabulating machines and move to hand recounts reveal a lack of understanding of the complexities of the election system, says Steve Simon, Minnesota’s secretary of state. He is the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State and sees virtually no support for such a measure among them. A hand recount in one jurisdiction could throw off an entire statewide election, he says.

Simon finds it ironic that those who complain about waiting days and weeks for results are calling for a hand recount. “One sure way to make[long waits]a permanent feature of elections is to count the votes by hand,” he says. His colleagues also see the value of voting on days other than the election, even if policies differ from state to state.

“Sometimes, after years of doing things a certain way, reforms are needed,” says Simon. But that doesn’t justify discarding practices and policies that are popular, proven and effective in the name of overthrowing the “current order,” he says.

Denny Hoskins, the Republican candidate for Secretary of State in Missouri, might disagree. He has come out in support of a hand recount and opposes voting by mail except for people with disabilities or those serving overseas in the military. Drop boxes have already been banned in Missouri.

If elected, Hoskins says he will create an election integrity unit within the Secretary of State’s office “to investigate complaints about elections and ensure rules are followed.” He declined to say whether he will remove voting machines or provide evidence of voter fraud in his state.

Briana Lennon, the clerk of Boone County, Missouri, has not heard Hoskins say how he would implement his plans. “I’ve only heard the general platform,” she says. “It’s not clear to me that he knows what kind of power he has under current law.”

There’s a good chance that Hoskins Lennon says he will have a chance to make some changes. It has been years since a Democrat won statewide office. His opponent, Democrat Barbara Phifer, thinks he may be far enough from the Republican mainstream to give him a chance. Plus, there will be measures on the ballot that could appeal to voters closer to her.

Stability has advantages

Calls for sweeping changes to election administration are motivated by fears that one side is using current procedures to cheat. Buongiorno, for his part, is convinced that has been the norm in every election.

But there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. By and large, states have adopted policies that work for their residents regardless of party, Simon says. “There’s really no basis to claim that these policies generally benefit one political party or the other,” he says. By the same token, one might expect hand recounts or one-day voting to hurt both sides equally.

People should ask tough questions of their government, Simon says. “It’s okay to be skeptical or reform-minded, but you don’t want to dismantle systems that provide stability, accuracy and trust.”