The 2020 election remains on the minds of many Republican voters, the GOP candidates for Montana’s western congressional district said in recent interviews, with varying levels of acceptance of the results and buy-in to voter fraud theories.
Former President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud that resulted in his loss to President Joe Biden have been repeatedly rejected or disproven by federal judges, state election officials and media investigations. Still, support for the former president’s assertions of a stolen election remain strong among many Republicans.
Some of the debunked claims were voiced by some candidates running in Montana’s western U.S. House district. Others raised concerns that changes to voting methods and big tech influences unfairly shaped the election. Concerns were also raised over potential federal legislation that could override election changes made in Republican-led states since the election.
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Candidates Al Olszewski, Mary Todd, Mitch Heuer and Matt Jette were asked about the election at a Kalispell candidate forum last month.
Former Congressman and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke did not attend the Kalispell forum — his campaign says due to a scheduling conflict — but has been asked about the election. In a January radio interview on KGVO, he accused big-tech companies of censorship and manipulation that skewed the information people could see and translated into votes. He also raised similar issues with temporary state changes to voting processes because of the pandemic.
“They changed how votes were done, mail-out votes, etcetera, etcetera,” Zinke said. “Then you have the cheating. I think the focus just on the cheating part undervalues the bias in the media, (Facebook CEO Mark) Zuckerberg effect, the COVID effect, and it was well-planned and organized.”
Zinke also said he does not believe the events of Jan. 6 rose to the level of an insurrection.
“As a former Navy SEAL and I’ve been in a lot of countries during civil war, that was not an insurrection,” he said. “(It was) riotous, illegal, a lot of things wrong with it and severely wrong with it. It fell short in my judgment as an insurrection.”
In the Kalispell forum, Heuer said he was unsure where there was fraud or not in the election based on the information available, adding he did not trust “fake news” media.
“My thing on election security is that I’m going to have to remain optimistic that the system we have in place is accurate,” he said. “I just don’t have good information either way. I just have to have faith that it’s a good system.”
Jette believes no fraud occurred in the election and criticized the perpetuation of fraud as an election issue, believing it distracts from pressing issues.
“If you want to work across the aisle then you have to stop with the purity tests in the primary elections,” he said at a forum sponsored by Republicans at Montana State University. “The longer we spend on fraudulent elections, the more we spend on conspiracy theories of vaccines, the less time we have to find common ground, to work across the aisle and find solutions.”
In an interview, Jette said he believed there is an “ineptness” in voting.
“People have a right to vote and the bar is very low to vote, but we don’t vote well,” he said. “So if you hate Trump or you hate Biden or you hate Zinke or you hate anyone else, you can actually do better. So I think I’m fighting against that.”
Both Olszewski, a former state lawmaker, and Todd, a church leader, stated support for voter fraud theories.
“Do I think the election was stolen? Absolutely, I think we have the proof,” Todd told the crowd. “… Yes I think this election was stolen and who in their right mind would allow a baby to be stolen and not try to get it back.”
In an interview Todd raised several election conspiracy theories, saying that voting algorithms raised suspicions with patterns initially showing votes going in one direction before shifting. She raised potential issues with voting machines and parts manufactured in China, and irregularities occurring during a pipe burst, an apparent reference to a delay in Georgia due to a leaky pipe.
Todd later provided a link to an article ahead of the release of “2,000 Mules,” a film from commentator and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza targeting third-party ballot delivery, as additional evidence of voter fraud. The group True the Vote obtained cellphone geolocation data and public record surveillance video to identify 2,000 individuals, which they call “mules,” to allege potentially hundreds of thousands of ballots in five swing states were dropped off nefariously — more than enough to swing the election back to Trump. Mules are identified as approaching 10 or more election drop boxes and pro-Biden nonprofits.
Todd said she had not seen the film, but wrote in an email, “I have seen enough irrefutable evidence that both side of the aisle should be highly concerned about the integrity of our voting process,” providing additional links to videos alleging computer-related voter fraud.
An Associated Press fact check of the film took a dim view of the conclusions in “2,000 Mules,” saying it “uses a flawed analysis of cellphone location data and drop box surveillance footage.” Fact checkers noted that the type of data used is not precise enough to determine if someone is in a general area or at a drop box. Also, in many states third-party ballot delivery is legal or legal in certain circumstances, such as for family members.
On the issue of election integrity and potential fraud, Olszewski described watching a video of votes being pulled from a suitcase and repeatedly counted, an apparent reference to a widely-shared but later debunked video from Georgia. A USA Today fact check states the video lacks proper context and state election officials found no wrongdoing.
In an interview, Olszewski raised the issue of changes to election rules in some states ahead of the 2020 election. He believes that changes made by governors and upheld by judges such as expanded mail-in voting overstepped authority.
“Determining how elections are run, auditing elections, that constitutional protection belongs to state legislators,” he said. “It doesn’t belong to the governor, it doesn’t belong to judges. What we watched through the pandemic is that authority was trampled on by governors and judges who said, ‘Oh we have to do this because of a pandemic.’ It was unconstitutional what they did.”
In addressing the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Olszewski in the Kalispell forum condemned those who entered the building and rioted, but said the majority who attended acted peacefully. The incident is being weaponized by Democrats against Trump and the Freedom Caucus, he said.
