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The election deniers coming to a swing state near you

Tom Tiffany said 2020 was stolen. Now he’s the GOP pick for Wisconsin governor. And there are others like him.

Tom Tiffany, the new Republican nominee for governor in Wisconsin, is not just a passive supporter of President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election. He is an active promoter of them.

In December 2020, when he was a member of Congress, he signed on to a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory. On January 6, 2021, he voted against certifying the results in Pennsylvania and Texas just hours after rioters threatened to kill his colleagues. He has stated he would have overturned Wisconsin’s results too, and just this year endorsed an FBI investigation into the state’s elections. And though the national climate in 2026 favors Democrats, Wisconsin is a closely divided state: Tiffany could beat the odds and win the general.

Francesca Hong lost. Here’s what it means for progressives.

There is, in short, a very real chance that someone who doesn’t believe American elections are legitimate may soon be supervising them in one of the 2028 presidential cycle’s most important swing states.

It’s not just Wisconsin. In each of the other most critical 2028 states — Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada — Republicans have chosen an election denier as their nominee for governor, secretary of state, or both. If any of these candidates win, they will have at least some degree of authority over the administration of elections in a state that could determine the outcome of the next presidential election.

So could the outcome of the 2026 midterms ultimately lead to a stolen election in 2028, as some are already warning? Election experts say it’s very unlikely.

State election laws contain numerous overlapping checks on interference from top officials. The judiciary has a pretty strong track record in stopping election malfeasance. A reform to the Electoral Count Act, passed quietly during the Biden presidency, significantly improved federal protections against election interference. And in 2028, the man uniquely responsible for previous pushes to invalidate the 2020 election won’t be on the ballot.

“[There are many] reasons why one should not be concerned,” says Rebecca Green, the co-director of the Election Law Program at The College of William and Mary. “Even in circumstances where there is a single partisan in control of a state’s election process, there are numerous checks on that power.”

That said, the risk isn’t zero. There is a remote chance, if the election is extremely close, that a well-placed election denier could swing........

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