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First, Trump may be better prepared. Mitchell, a close Trump ally, has spent the last few years building up a network of activists focused on local boards of elections. And the Republican National Committee’s election litigation team is now being led by Christina Bobb, an election denier who is now facing criminal charges for her efforts to overturn the 2020 race. The RNC claims it is recruiting an army of 100,000 poll observers who could provide significant disruption during voting and counting.

“I think we saw efforts by Republicans in 2020 that were pretty ham-handed,” said Marc Elias, a top Democratic voting rights lawyer. “I worry that there will be both legal and extralegal efforts by Republicans to keep ballots from being counted.”

But more significantly, the idea that the 2020 election was stolen has moved from the fringes to being a pillar of the Republican party. A January poll from PRRI found that 66% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen. “The most important thing we have to do is protect the vote. You have to keep your eyes open because these people want to cheat and they do cheat, and, frankly, it’s the only thing they do well,” Trump said in a prerecorded video that played all four nights during the Republican national convention in July.

The belief in stolen elections, Elias said, was “no longer the provenance of crazy people like Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell. This is no longer the province of people who thought that there were bamboo filaments in paper or mythical sea creatures involved in the election with Venezuelan dictators.