What is an Election Denier?

What does it really mean to be an election denier? Leah Anderson, the Republican Candidate for Minnehaha Auditor, gives us her take on what an election denier is, who coined the phrase, and why.

Literally an election denier is someone who does not believe an election occurred. 

But is that really what people who use this phrase mean? 

When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser. ― Anonymous

After the 2020 election, people who wanted to stop dialog on the election started using "election denier" to make fun of people who questioned the results. While it was a brilliant marketing gimmick that was somewhat effective due to media and tech censorship, name calling and restricted speech are never wise ideas.

Interestingly, there have been rumblings of election improprieties for generations whether it was Lyndon Johnson burning ballots in Texas in 1948, George Bush and his hench-people playing games with chads in Florida in 2000, or Biden and his team manipulating the vote with mail-in ballots, dropbox stuffing, and electronic manipulation in 2020. 

Rather than pushing voting problems under the rug and hoping they go away, it’s time for us to stop the name calling and start addressing the issues. We need to follow the laws and when the laws aren’t clear we need to ask our legislators to clean them up. Then we need to hold people accountable when they break the laws. 

When a new technology is used we need checks and balances so it does not open up opportunities for fraud. With machine tabulating, for example, there are many ways the machines can be hacked even if they aren’t connected to the internet during voting. Interestingly, counting in the precinct, as required by South Dakota law, combined with machine counting reduces the chance of fraud.

The bottom line is people should not be voting more than once or voting for others. Dead people should not be able to “cast a ballot” and people should be voting in the right precinct so they aren’t voting for someone else’s representative. And most importantly your vote should be protected  - it shouldn’t matter if you are far left, far right, center left, center right or middle.

If elected, I look forward to serving as your next Minnehaha County Auditor!

Thanks, Leah