Governor Gavin Newsom of California defeated yesterday’s recall election by a large enough margin to squash earlier Republican threats to challenge the results no matter the outcome. But the proliferation of those allegations of voter fraud before the election, including ungrounded claims from former President Donald Trump that the contest was “rigged,” point toward an ominous future in which more GOP candidates challenge the results of any election that they do not win. …
Even as Democrats celebrated Newsom’s resounding win—which turned on his support for the kind of aggressive COVID-19 vaccine mandates that President Joe Biden has now embraced—they saw the preemptive Republican claims of fraud as a measure of the threats that are mounting to voter access and election integrity, particularly in GOP-controlled states. CONTINUED
Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic
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