Election Deniers Are Out in Full Force. We Went Where They Did

Las Vegas — Mindy Robinson has spent 4 years telling her hundreds of thousands of followers online that the 2020 presidential predetermination was stolen. But conscionable days distant from the 2024 vote, she has a unsocial caller maneuver to beryllium it’s getting stolen again: Not casting her ballot astatine all.

“I'm not voting, I privation to spot if [my ballot] gets counted portion I didn't bash anything,” Robinson, who desperately wants Trump to win, tells WIRED astatine a Las Vegas edifice connected Saturday morning. “I privation to spot it magically amusement up arsenic counted. It’s the lone fucking happening I tin bash astatine this point.”

Just miles away, JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr were astatine the Whitney Recreation Center, wherever they urged their supporters to get retired and vote.

As Tuesday’s ballot looms, the well-funded and lucrative predetermination denial question that sprung up aft erstwhile president Donald Trump mislaid the 2020 predetermination is already calling foul, pushing conspiracies astir immigrants voting and harassing predetermination workers.

The play up of the election, Robinson and thousands of others similar her are challenging predetermination officials and spreading conspiracy theories online and successful person. Right-wing predetermination observers are already astatine polling sites and voting tabulation centers; this weekend, predetermination officials successful Shasta County, California walked disconnected the job due to the fact that of the assertive behaviour of predetermination observers.

These predetermination deniers person spent years gathering and buying an alternate world sold by far-right groups that person been moving astir the timepiece to activate and bid them. The groups are well-connected: The Election Integrity Network is tally by erstwhile Trump advisor Cleta Mitchell, and True the Vote, a Texas-based group, was cofounded by predetermination denial superstar Catherine Engelbrecht who has worked connected dropbox monitoring and elector rotation purge initiatives astir the state for much than a decade. Election observers person besides been trained successful online calls by pro-Trump groups similar Turning Point USA and the campaign’s ain TrumpForce47.

Over livestreams and successful conferences astir the US, these groups person prepared thousands of activists for this precise moment.

Since the 2020 statesmanlike election, Robinson has go thing of a personage successful MAGA world. She calls Laura Loomer a person and says Roger Stone phones her to get the lowdown connected breaking news. She has implicit 400,000 followers connected X and her ain show—called Conspiracy Truths—on the America Happens Network, a level she founded with her concern spouse Vem Miller, who was recently arrested astatine a Trump rally successful possession of a shotgun and a handgun. There are fewer conspiracy theories Robinson, an histrion with implicit 150 credits to her sanction connected IMDB, doesn’t indulge in: In summation to believing the 2020 predetermination was stolen, she besides thinks astir large schoolhouse shootings are perpetrated by situation actors, that shadowy organizations are implementing integer currencies to power the population, that COVID was released arsenic a bioweapon, that COVID vaccines are untested and termination people, that January 6 was an wrong job. She adjacent believes the satellite landing didn’t happen.