All of the Grand Canyon State’s candidates are full election deniers. From gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake to state representative and aspiring secretary of state Mark Finchem, and from attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh to Senate hopeful Blake Masters, all have fervently pushed what has been dubbed “The Big Lie.”

Lake, possibly Trump’s biggest acolyte, tends to move the goalposts depending on what question she’s answering and what audience it’s for. She’s stated she would not have certified the 2020 election, believes the Democrats “have a demonic agenda” and one of her recent campaign ads featured a far-right extremist pastor who describes Islam as “Satanic” and likens LGBTQ people to child molesters and murderers.

Finchem introduced a resolution in Arizona to decertify votes in three counties. He’s a member of the Oath Keepers, one of the so-called militias that participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection. He references “Soros” — a hot conspiracy-theory keyword — on his Twitter feed more times than you can count, and he says he would not have certified the 2020 election.

Hamadeh has reportedly lied about his background, said President Joe Biden didn’t win Arizona in 2020 and seemingly admitted to voter fraud as a teenager by saying he changed his mother’s ballot. He also said he would not have certified the 2020 election, even though that’s not a responsibility the Arizona attorney general has.

Masters, during a debate against Sen. Mark Kelly in October, called Biden the “legitimate president” and said he’d seen no evidence the vote was rigged — while he continued to promote exactly the opposite.

Arizona has 11 electoral votes for the 2024 presidential election. Biden won the state by 10,457 votes, or 0.4%.

Gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo and state attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno are key Wolverine State contenders — and are all complete deniers.

Dixon’s stance on the 2020 election being stolen has oscillated between certainty and ignorance. Her communications director said Dixon would not commit to accepting the results in this upcoming election, since “there’s no reason to believe they [Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson] are serious about secure elections.”

Karamo entered the wider public eye by claiming she witnessed fraud at Detroit’s absentee counting board in 2020. This earned her Trump’s endorsement. In a recently filed lawsuit, Karamo claimed Detroit’s absentee ballot counting system was so flawed that Detroit voters should be required to vote in person. She also wants to roll back access to mail voting, and she’s a supporter of the America Project, which encourages “citizen election monitors” to set up hidden cameras to capture voters’ license plate numbers and to show up to polling places “well-armed.”

DePerno is currently under investigation by a special prosecutor for an alleged plot to illegally take and analyze ballot tabulation machines after the 2020 election. He also met with a top Trump appointee at the U.S. State Department on Jan. 6, 2021, and is considered to have played an important behind-the-scenes role in crafting the “stolen election” narrative.

Michigan has 15 electoral votes. Biden won the state by over 150,000 votes, or 2.8%.

The Keystone State has an extra wrinkle: The secretary of state is not elected, but appointed by the governor. Gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano and would-be senator Dr. Mehmet Oz are both election deniers. Though FiveThirtyEight.com tags Oz as merely having raised questions about the election, his actions look more like complete denial.

Mastriano’s victory in the Republican primary was unpopular with both Democrats and establishment-minded Republicans. While he seemingly didn’t break any laws on Jan. 6, Mastriano was in Washington, D.C., and arranged buses to carry pro-Trump protesters there. He’s repeatedly said he wants to reset the voter rolls and require all Pennsylvanians to re-register in order to cast a ballot in future elections. There’s one problem: It violates federal law. Mastriano has also stated he could “decertify every [voting] machine in the state with the stroke of a pen via my secretary of state.”

Oz, better known as TV personality “Dr. Oz,” has repeatedly stated the 2020 election was riddled with fraud. He was brought before Congress to testify about hawking questionable diet aids on his now-canceled show, and he began his candidacy with questions about his Turkish citizenship (and his explanation for why he kept it). He’s also come under fire for residing in New Jersey rather than Pennsylvania, though being a non-resident is not disqualifying. Some worry he could become uniquely dangerous as a senator if he chose to push pseudoscience like the diet aids he promoted on his TV show.

Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes. Biden took the state by just over 80,000 votes, or 1.2%.

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Elections are complex. As Barsky says, “Those viewing the apparatus from the outside may lack a nuanced understanding of how elections work. This lack of understanding can contribute to feelings of distrust. If we don’t understand the process, it’s easier for us to believe there are flaws.”

While voting access is clearly essential to a democracy, who counts the votes and certifies elections is even more so.

These races in today’s midterms will clearly have a huge impact, not just on their states, but on the 2024 presidential election. While voting access is clearly essential to a democracy, who counts the votes and certifies elections is even more so. These are just three states where election-denying candidates running for office will have direct control over elections should they win.

Elections should be conducted transparently, where the candidate who wins actually wins. The constant evidence-free deluge of accusations regarding so-called stolen elections harms the perception of free and fair elections — whether there is fraud or not. Americans don’t currently appear to trust the process. Since politics is perception, not trusting the voting process is an existential threat that could irreparably harm democracy itself.

What electoral changes would make you feel more confident in American elections?