Right-wing media erupts in conspiracy theories after GOP losses in Arizona

As votes were counted, right-wing media figures claimed the “steal is on” and amplified conspiracies about ballot tabulation in Maricopa County 

Ahead of Election Day, right-wing media figures primed their audiences to accept the midterm election results only if Republicans won. And on Election Day, they seized on innocuous voting machine issues in Arizona to fuel their baseless voter fraud claims (which local officials were quick to debunk) and falsely accused county election officials of fraud and malfeasance. Spanish-language misinformers on radio and Twitter also echoed claims about voting machines, insinuating that electoral fraud was what made a Democratic victory possible.

Arizona election officials clarified that the voting machine issues did not impact people’s ability to vote, saying, “There was no one who came today with a valid ID who was turned away from the polls. … Even when we had this [issue] and we hadn’t figured out the solution, people were still able to vote. It was just a matter of maybe not voting in the way they wanted to.” 

• On election night, Carlson suggested the use of Dominion voting machines “is an actual threat to democracy,” invoking Maricopa County as an example. 
• Infowars host Alex Jones suggested issues with vote tabulation machines could be “false flags.”
• The Gateway Pundit published an article with the title “BREAKING: Maricopa Drops SHOCKING Sunday Numbers — Claim Only 54% for Kari Lake FROM ELECTION DAY! And Independents Went to Hobbs! — STEAL IS ON.”
• On War Room, Bannon said: “Day by day [the election is] being stolen from Kari Lake.” 
• On Fox, Hegseth complained: “The fact that here we are on Monday … still counting ballots raises a lot of questions for a lot of people and rightfully so.” 
• Carlson insinuated nefarious motives behind the machine issues and suggested Democrats could be intentionally cheating, asking, “Is this fraud? We’re not sure. And on some level it doesn’t matter what it is. What we know is that the mechanics of our elections are not working, almost exclusively in states and cities run by Democrats. Are they cheating?”
• Fox host Sean Hannity claimed that votes “magically appeared” while ballots were being counted in Arizona, saying, “What, they just magically appeared? How do we keep adding hundreds of thousands of votes to the vote count that were not counted?”
• Stop the Steal founder Ali Alexander baselessly claimed there was “systematic fraud” in Arizona and claimed, “There’s no problems in any Democrat, high-turnout zone in the country.”
• Hoft published an article claiming that Maricopa County officials are “demons” who have been “gaslighting the public as they steal a landslide election from Kari Lake.” 
• Fox host Larry Kudlow introduced an interview with Lake by describing the vote counting process in Arizona as a “scam.” 
• On War Room, Michael Flynn complained about the vote counting, saying, “This is banana republic stuff, this is Third World stuff.” 
• Bannon welcomed Hoft on War Room, where they discussed supposed “engineered chaos” and a “manufactured plan” to turn away Republican voters from the polls on Election Day.
• Gateway Pundit reporter Jordan Conradson went on One America News to decry being denied press credentials at the Maricopa elections center to observe vote counting and said it was evidence that America is “turning into a Third World country. We’re losing our First Amendment right.” 
• OAN correspondent Daniel Baldwin reported that “it looks as though we’re seeing a very similar playbook to that that we saw in 2020 in the Grand Canyon State.”
• James A. Nava, founder of Sniper Books, tweeted: “Voter Fraud Update in the Midterm Elections: In Maricopa County, Arizona, Democrats had just a 17% turnout on Election Day. This means that 100% of independent voters had to vote for Hobbs to win.” 
• Bilingual right-wing news outlet El American tweeted that: “Arizona election officials’ use of voting machines in Maricopa County has once again cast a dark cloud over a highly contested election.” 
• Freddy Silva, host of Spanish-language radio show Entre Líneas, commented on election results in Arizona, stating, “Arizona, which is where Kari Lake is and where there have been registration problems, irregularities in the voting system,” is due for “a big wake-up call for not only the officials in charge of this, of the office there in Arizona and who also control the elections, but I believe for the rest of the nation.”