Election Day 2026 started off with election deniers claiming voter fraud was happening everywhere. But hours later, after a historic sweep of House and Senate races by Democrats, election deniers on the ballot were silent and made no real claims that the vote was rigged.
For months, election deniers had alleged without evidence that the vote would be rigged to flip results in favor of Democrats, that mail-in ballots would be compromised, and that a wave of noncitizens would vote in such numbers to alter the outcome of the election.
None of this happened, and in reality the country appeared to roundly reject the policies implemented by President Donald Trump and his administration.
For months, hundreds of election deniers in state and federal races had campaigned on promises to investigate past elections or overhaul voting procedures. But a WIRED review of some of the most pivotal races involving election deniers found that almost all of them lost, and none of them, or the network of activists and groups backing them, have raised any questions about the results.
In Arizona’s governor race, Andy Biggs, who was among the members of Congress who challenged the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021, conceded to incumbent Democrat Katie Hobbs and made no mention of voter fraud or election rigging. Instead, he blamed voters not turning out to vote: “We just didn’t get our turnout quite as full as we wanted to.”
Mike Rogers, who was running for a Senate seat in Michigan against Abdul El-Sayed, had been a critic of Trump’s election denial comments, but in the months leading up to Tuesday’s vote had begun to voice skepticism about the security of America’s elections. In the end it didn’t matter, as Rogers was decisively defeated. Rogers has not publicly commented on the outcome of the election and did not respond to a request for comment.
In Wisconsin, Tom Tiffany, who objected to certifying Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020, was beaten by his Democrat opponent David Crowley in the race for governor. Just weeks before the midterms, Tiffany had welcomed the FBI’s baseless investigation into the state’s elections. On Tuesday night, Tiffany conceded defeat without any reference to election rigging.
In Ohio, billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who baselessly said in the past that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen by “big tech,” lost his race for governor to Amy Acton. On Tuesday night, Ramaswamy told his supporters that he had called his opponent to concede defeat and wish her well. He did not mention election rigging or voter fraud.
