Roevember, Election Denialism, and the Swing States of America

Photo courtesy of The Hill

When the Dobbs decision came down in June of this year, most agreed that the effect of it would be seismic and could shape the entire national landscape, especially with both chambers of Congress resting on threadbare Democratic majorities. But looking even further ahead, Dobbs may have also changed the calculus for the all-important 2024 presidential election. That outcome could depend upon who is governing in the key states that Biden took from Trump in 2020: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona. It turns out, the question of whether women should have a right to an abortion overlaps in many instances with whether elections will be run freely and fairly in these states. Could a “Roevember” wave in 2022 save our democracy in 2024? Let’s take a closer look.

Abortion Rights Are on the Ballot in All Five Key Swing States

Whether voters realize it or not, abortion rights are threatened in all five Trump-to-Biden swing states. In some cases, archaic abortion ban laws that were on the books from the 1800s have threatened to spring—or in some cases as in Arizona have actually sprung—back to life after Roe was overturned by Dobbs. Moreover, because of extreme Republican gerrymandering, the legislatures in all of these states are controlled by the GOP, and often the only thing that stands between them and strict abortion laws are the possibility of Democratic governors. (If you want to understand how strongly gerrymandering favors the GOP in state legislatures, note how in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan there are Democratic governors elected by statewide vote, and Arizona and Georgia each have two Democratic senators elected by statewide vote. In other words, when the vote is statewide, Democrats often come out on top, but when it is district by district, the GOP’s skewed maps keep their state legislative majorities in power.)

The GOP gubernatorial contenders in these states, whether they are challengers or incumbents, all favor stricter abortion laws. In two cases, their positions are extreme. Tudor Dixon in Michigan has implied that even child victims of incestual rape should be required to take their pregnancies to term, because “a life is a life for me.” After the primary she has sought to walk back her public statements by saying she would abide by the will of the voters in a referendum on the Michigan ballot to protect abortion rights, plainly hoping voters in the state separate the issue of abortion from her campaign. That so far isn’t happening.

Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania has taken an even more extreme position, saying back in 2019 that he believes women who get an abortion should be charged with murder. As a legislator, he proposed a ban on abortion after a fetal Down syndrome diagnosis and a prohibition on abortion services obtained through telemedicine, and last year he re-introduced a proposal for a six-week abortion ban. Now, as the GOP candidate for governor, he also is hoping to temper this by saying his position is “irrelevant” because it’s up to the state legislature to pass such laws. But this is wrong on its face because the only reason some of his own proposed laws failed was because of a veto by the Democratic governor, Tom Wolf.

In the other swing states, GOP-controlled legislatures already have proposed or enacted stricter abortion laws. In Wisconsin, Democrat Tony Evers has been the only check upon that push, but he is facing a tough reelection bid.  The Wisconsin GOP is also hoping for a few more seats in the legislature which would give them a veto-proof majority. Kerri Lake of Arizona has said that if elected, she will “sign bills to protect life when they land on my desk,” and Brian Kemp had already signed a fetal “heartbeat” bill that outlaws abortion after just six weeks of pregnancy. (I put it in quotes because there is no heart in the fetus that can beat by this time, so the name of the law is misleading.)

It looks like abortion rights voters may turn out in droves in these states to protect legal access to reproductive services. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, where the GOP candidates are most extreme on this issue, the polls are showing a potential blowout, with both Dixon and Mastriano trailing by double digits. But voters in Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia have yet to make as clear a connection to the governors’ races and abortion rights in those states. If they do in the coming weeks, it could result in Democratic governorships in a majority of the Trump-to-Biden swing states.

Election Denialism Overlaps with Abortion Extremism

One of the most serious threats to our democratic system is the rise of election deniers who are openly running for office in these key swing states, where the final certification of electoral votes from the 2024 election will be in the hands of the governors. Under the proposed Electoral Count Reform Act, likely to be passed later this year, state governors will be the sole state officials (unless otherwise specified by state laws) responsible for certifying electors. This would make it far harder for a defeated presidential candidate to submit false electoral slates. And if you’re worried that these swing states will pass laws to try and change that, they would still need the governors’ signatures on such laws, and that’s highly unlikely if they are Democrats.

In each of these swing states except for Georgia, election deniers are on the ballot. Mastriano of Pennsylvania is the most extreme, having chartered buses for people to attend the “Stop the Steal” January 6 rally and led a prayer in advance of the attack for MAGA to “seize power” and “rise up” against supposed election fraud. Dixon in Michigan agreed with her primary opponents during their debates that widespread fraud had changed the outcome of the Michigan election (it hadn’t), though she is now attempting to shift toward a “we don’t know enough” position. Wisconsin GOP contender Tim Michels has considered overturning the 2020 election results once he is in office and has pledged to restrict absentee ballots if elected. And hard core election denier Kerri Lake in Arizona even claimed there was election fraud going on in the Republican primary that she herself won, claiming somewhat bizarrely that her supporters “out-voted the fraud.”

Voters, however, don’t seem to care too much about election denialism as an issue, at least compared to abortion rights. Lake, who has moderated her stance on abortion and slipped in words like keeping abortion “legal” in her public statements, is running a close race with Katie Hobbs for governor of Arizona, even though she is a staunch election denier and election conspiracy theorist. So, too, are Doug Mastriano and Tudor Dixon, but their extreme views on abortion may pull down their candidacies even while Lake remains competitive because she is viewed as more moderate on the question. And in Georgia, where strict abortion laws are already in place, we can take some heart in the fact that Gov. Brian Kemp (and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger) defied the former president’s illegal pressure campaign and certified the Georgia 2020 presidential election results anyway, so even if they are reelected we are unlikely to see electoral slate shenanigans out of that state in 2024. (This won’t stop them, however, from seeking to suppress the Black vote in other, more traditional ways.)

Admittedly, Arizona could become even more of a hotbed for election denialism and conspiracies if Lake is elected governor there, but in most scenarios the electoral count math works for Democrats even without that state’s electoral votes. If Evers can hold on in Wisconsin, and Democrats in Pennsylvania and Michigan prevail over their extremist opponents as expected, this will go a long way to help secure the integrity of the electoral counts in 2024.