The 2024 Anti-Democracy Playbook
American Oversight has identified eight tactics anti-democracy activists and political leaders are using to lay the groundwork for post-election chaos and confusion.
Harnessing the power of the election denial movement is a key component of conservatives’ 2024 strategy. Far-right activists and politicians, including former President Donald Trump and his enablers, are working to convince Americans that U.S. elections are riddled with fraud and error, exploiting the same lies that underpinned the effort to overturn the 2020 results.
American Oversight has been tracking and investigating the anti-democracy movement as it seeks to foster doubt in democratic elections. The 2024 Anti-Democracy Playbook, published Monday, examines eight tactics anti-democracy activists and political leaders are using to suppress votes and lay the groundwork for post-election chaos and confusion. These include:
Mass voter registration challenges
Partisan and politically motivated litigation
Anti-immigrant election conspiracy theories
Threats of voter intimidation
Partisan election administration and rules
Certification delays
Hand counts
State-led fraud investigations
The Anti-Democracy Playbook also outlines how these tactics are being deployed in several key states, and provides links to thousands of pages of related public records uncovered by American Oversight.
The primary objective of those following the Anti-Democracy Playbook is exacerbating distrust by pushing two false central claims. First, election deniers argue without evidence that significant numbers of people are voting illegally. This happens, they claim, because voter rolls are inaccurate, noncitizens are illegally voting en masse, and people are abusing mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes. Second, they lie about structural flaws in the administration of elections, claiming election machines are inaccurate or manipulated, certain election administrators may tamper with the results, and officials are not properly investigating discrepancies.
To address these purported issues, anti-democracy activists have pushed unnecessary and even harmful “solutions.” Right-wing groups, activists, and public officials are challenging voter registrations, encouraging new laws requiring proof of citizenship to vote, and beefing up law enforcement units set up to investigate and prosecute illegal voting. At the same time, they are encouraging hand counts, recruiting tens of thousands of poll watchers, and adopting last-minute election rule changes.
These so-called fixes are not only unnecessary; they also can make it harder for officials to administer elections while introducing barriers to voting that disproportionately affect people of color and other marginalized groups. Their inevitable failure to solve issues that don’t exist creates the impression that problems remain unsolved, bolstering lies about rife fraud and inaccurate results. And the more widely held the belief in these lies is, the more likely it will be that their adherents will be to support desperate, drastic, and dangerous attempts to overturn our democracy.