Ronald Brownstein writes:

Governor Gavin Newsom of California defeated yesterday’s recall election by a large enough margin to squash earlier Republican threats to challenge the results no matter the outcome. But the proliferation of those allegations of voter fraud before the election, including ungrounded claims from former President Donald Trump that the contest was “rigged,” points toward an ominous future in which more GOP candidates challenge the results of any election that they do not win.

Although Trump, Larry Elder (the leading GOP candidate to replace Newsom), and other Republicans had repeatedly raised unspecified allegations of fraud in recent days, those same claims were muted after the “no” position on the recall quickly established a commanding 2-to-1 advantage as the first results arrived last night. Elder, in his remarks to supporters, did not repeat any of his fraud claims and used the word defeat to describe the outcome. California Republican Party Chair Jessica Millan Patterson, in her statement, said Newsom had achieved only a “hollow victory”—but by using the word victory, she acknowledged that he had won.

Those concessions, however grudging, marked a sharp turn for Republicans. Elder previously insisted that he was ready to file lawsuits against unspecified “shenanigans” and linked from his campaign homepage to a website that, before any ballots were counted, called for a special legislative session to investigate “the twisted results of this 2021 Recall Election.” (That language had come down from the StopCAFraud.com website this morning.)

Even as Democrats celebrated Newsom’s resounding win—which turned on his support for the kind of aggressive COVID-19 vaccine mandates that President Joe Biden has now embraced—they saw the preemptive Republican claims of fraud as a measure of the threats that are mounting to voter access and election integrity, particularly in GOP-controlled states.

“Long-term, this is becoming the new GOP party line,” Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state in Colorado told me yesterday. “For races that conservatives are unlikely to win, like the California recall race, activists, pundits, candidates, and officials are preempting those losses with the idea that something is wrong with the election.” The result, Griswold said, “is it sows doubt in the entire election system to make it easier for extreme legislators to come in and suppress the vote.” [Continue reading…]