The Election Denier's Playbook, Part Two: The Birth of the Big Lie

Before a single vote was cast, President Donald Trump began laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election. For years, Trump had insisted on repeating long-debunked myths about noncitizens voting in large numbers in U.S. elections. Then, in spring 2020, as COVID-19 began to spread rapidly, it became clear that voting by mail was the best option to prevent the spread of the life-threatening disease. Trump responded by falsely claiming that mail-in voting would enable widespread fraud — a lie he continues to push today.

When the 2020 votes were counted and former Vice President Joe Biden was declared the winner, Trump refused to concede. In the weeks after the election, Trump and his allies pursued a multi-pronged approach to overturn the results: filing and losing dozens of lawsuits, spreading disinformation, and pressuring then Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certified electoral college votes. All that came to a head on January 6, 2021. Several prominent Arizonans promoted or participated in the rally on the Capitol Ellipse that day. Many others helped create the atmosphere of lies and misinformation that ultimately led to the January 6 riot.

Fast forward to 2025 and one of the first actions of Trump’s second presidency was to issue sweeping pardons of those who stormed the Capitol on January 6. The message couldn’t have been clearer: as he came back into office, Trump’s top political priority was protecting, defending, and legitimizing anyone who had advanced the cause of election denial back in 2020, even those who had taken over the US Capitol in a violent assault.

Arizona was one of the closest and most consequential battlegrounds of the 2020 election. Joe Biden won the state by fewer than 11,000 votes — a thin but significant margin. Weeks after the results were already known, Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, traveled to Phoenix and participated in an unofficial hearing where state lawmakers made baseless allegations about voter fraud. Their goal was obvious: to create enough doubt to justify overturning the results.

The actual election results were clear, and most of Arizona’s elected officials acknowledged as much. Despite being pressured by Trump to reverse the outcome, Governor Ducey certified the results, publicly defended the integrity of Arizona’s elections, and stood by the will of the voters in December 2020.

But not every political player in Arizona was willing to do the same. On the same day that Ducey certified the results, 11 “fake electors”, including state lawmakers Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, met and signed fraudulent documents declaring themselves Arizona’s duly elected and qualified electors and falsely claiming that Trump had won the state. They then submitted those documents to Congress, where they were ignored.

In the wake of the January 6 insurrection, those in Trump’s orbit continued to claim that the 2020 election had been stolen. Responding to this pressure, State Senate President Karen Fann and state senator Warren Petersen, then chair of the State Senate’s Judiciary committee, ordered an “audit” of the election results in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county. Using the subpoena power of the Arizona State Senate, they demanded sensitive voter data, then handed the records over to a firm called Cyber Ninjas, which had no previous experience auditing elections, and which was led by a vocal supporter of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement.

Petersen and Fann’s decision to launch this sham "audit" revealed they were willing to abuse institutional power in pursuit of a predetermined political outcome.

And yet even their infamous "audit", which was marked by sloppiness, errors, and bizarre conspiracy theories, found that Biden had carried Maricopa County.

Now more than five years in the past, you’d think the sham audit, the fake electors, and the “Big Lie” would feel like a distant fever dream. But 2020 and 2021 continue to cast a shadow on our politics today – and help provide a roadmap for what could be coming in 2026 and beyond.

Whether you were following the misinformation mayhem unfold in 2021 or you're learning about it for the first time today, you might be wondering how, and why, these lies had Arizona's elections in a chokehold.

To understand the power of mis and dis-information, we must first look at it on a human scale.

We've all been there: someone says something that you know is blatantly incorrect with confidence and conviction. Maybe you tried to correct them, but they shut you out. Maybe you held your tongue but later wondered if you did the right thing.

If this is a repeated pattern, it can even put a strain on important relationships. But before you discount that person as a lost cause, you should know that falling for mis- and disinformation can happen to anyone.

It's tempting to blame social media and the internet, but the rise of mis- and disinformation isn't a unique byproduct of the digital age. People have always clung to stories that evoke emotion and validate their existing belief systems, and powerful groups have long capitalized on this tendency to sway people's opinions in their favor – even if the message they're delivering isn't entirely true.

What’s different today is how digital algorithms have created echo chambers. The platforms most people use to get information are engineered to drive reactions and maintain a user's undivided attention, rather than focusing on the unbiased truth. Content that does well tug at people’s emotions and validates their existing worldview. That engagement then encourages the algorithm to push it to more people, even if it is false.

The Trump Administration and Arizona's leading election deniers know this, and they have used every tool at their disposal to thwart the truth to undermine elections and maintain power.

It's normal for people to align with others who make sense of the world in similar ways. And while partisanship has always been around, polarization has sharpened division and transformed ideological differences into hostility. For election deniers, that means the lack of favorable results is not only unacceptable, but simply uncomprehensible. Elections, with all their rules, procedures, checks, and balances, have been caught in the crosshairs.

So, next time a provocative post crosses your feed, ask yourself: is its purpose to educate, raise awareness, or elicit an emotional response that will only serve to deepen divisions?

Understanding why and how misinformation works can help us identify who should be held accountable for its spread. More often than not, it's someone seeking power. We dive deeper into some textbook examples in Part 3 of the Election Denier's Playbook – coming soon!