Richard Hasen

Thank you.

Well, there are a number of conspiracy theories and a kind of whole election denial complex that's floating out there.

People who believe that there was or claim that they believe that there was interference in the 2020 elections and the 2024 elections by various foreign entities, including China and Iran.

And the idea would be that

Donald Trump would use his powers to protect the national security of the United States by imposing a number of various restrictions on how people register to vote, how people vote, and how states tabulate, that is, how they count the votes.

Right.

So, you know, there's different kinds of interference that have been alleged.

You're referring back to what happened in 2016 when the Russian government had a kind of influence operation to try to sway public opinion through various impersonation and false statements and things that were posted on social media.

People debate how much of an effect that had, but that was trying to kind of hack the minds of the American people.

It wasn't actually hacking voting machines, right?

Some allegations that the Russians had probed some voter registration databases, not to really do anything, but maybe just to show that they were trying to have some kind of interference.

But there's been no proof of any changes in votes, changes in voter registration databases or anything else.

Same thing in 2020.

There were allegations that Russia and China and Iran tried to do influence operations, tried to get Americans to fight each other, get us to be more polarized, to influence who might be voted, to undermine people's confidence in the integrity of the elections.

But again, nothing that showed actual interference with voting machinery or tabulation.

And yet these conspiracy theories claim that there's something wrong with the voting machines.

This may be why Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was reported in Puerto Rico looking at voting machines back, I think it was in January.

Why perhaps the FBI was seizing ballots and other records from Fulton County, Georgia, where Trump had claimed in the 2020 election that

There was interference that led to Joe Biden's victory in the state of Georgia.

None of this is, of course, true, and it has been investigated.