After two days of talking about electoral fraud at the biggest conservative conference of the year, a woman asked two Republican electoral lawyers who spoke on a panel: What are we going to do with the voting machines that have exchanged thousands and thousands of votes?
The crowd cheered, but Republican lawyer Charlie Spies shook his head.
“I may be booed off the stage for this, but I have to say that this is simply not true,” he said, causing the crowd to shout. “There is no evidence that this is true.”
It was a rare reality check for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a weekend summit dominated by false and baseless claims about electoral fraud and culminating in a 90-minute speech filled with lies by former President Donald Trump who declared the 2020 presidential race race rigged.
Spies, who worked for Republican Senate candidate John James in Michigan last year, has repeatedly countered the most extravagant claims. His comments brought him protests and taunts from another panelist, but underscored the line of failure the Republican Party faces as it moves forward as a party while still amusing – and even celebrating – Trump’s lies that the election was stolen.
The false electoral allegations were central to the Orlando conference, where speakers and speakers repeatedly claimed that the dead voted, the fraud changed the election result and the American people were sold by everyone from Democrats to judges and lower Republicans.
Speakers met in support of restrictive electoral laws – which Republican lawmakers have proposed in dozens of states – and asked participants to work to defeat HR 1, a voting rights bill that Democrats introduced in the House.
During a panel on Friday, Jesse Binnall, a campaign lawyer who sued in Nevada for Biden’s victory, claimed 42,000 double or multiple votes in that state.
“Postal voting is ready for fraud,” he said.
Challenging the outcome of the 2020 elections was also a great line of applause throughout the four-day event.
Even Senator John Hawley, R-Mo., Was praised by a crowd on Friday after mentioning his role in challenging the counting of Electoral College results on January 6. Five people died and hundreds were arrested after a pro-Trump riot broke into the Capitol to stop counting.
Trump finally showed up on Sunday night to deliver his first speech since leaving office last month, a clear boom over the long weekend.
During a 90-minute speech that frequently revised his most worn-out conspiracy theories about voting, he declared the election unconstitutional, illegal and a “swindler”, provoking that he could return for a 2024 offer.
“This election was rigged and the Supreme Court and other courts did not want to do anything about it,” said Trump.
He falsely claimed that there were more votes than people in Detroit and Pennsylvania (allegations that were proven false) and called for a series of electoral reforms that he said would have allowed him to win.
“We must eliminate the insanity of mass and very corrupt voting by mail,” he said. “We must have a voter registration.”
Trump’s electoral fraud allegations got even more confusing when he started bragging about Republicans’ low vote successes, which he said he won in his “sleeve”, as if the fraud somehow affected only the top of the ticket .
This tension touched on a key question that Republican leaders will have to face when looking at the next elections: how do you mobilize voters to go to the polls that they believe will not count their votes correctly?
Republicans in Georgia had to deal with this issue earlier this year, after the Republican Party’s participation in the second round of the Senate on January 5 fell short of the November race, according to TargetSmart. Both seats turned blue.
Electoral conspiracies are also becoming a financial liability: polling companies have launched a series of billions of dollar lawsuits in recent weeks against conservative media figures and vehicles.
The dilemma also seemed to weigh on questioned Republican lawyer Spiers on Saturday. He reminded CPAC participants that postal voting had not been an issue for Republicans years before the 2020 race. In fact, he said, Republicans used to win more votes per ballot than Democrats.
“The agreement is that early voting is not going to go away,” he said. “We have to take advantage of that and tell people not to vote early is to cut your nose to offend your face, it doesn’t work.”
He offered a solution that brought him together with other panelists – and most of his party.
“We changed the system, we were overconfident in it,” he said. “So encourage people to vote using the laws we have.”
