Trends and Harms of Election Denialism: The United States and Australia

‘Trends in Election Denialism: the United States and Australia’ ‘Election denialism’ denotes the claim that an election has been ‘stolen’ or rigged either by private individuals or, more disturbingly, by election authorities. Although an increasingly common form of political disinformation, we tend to think of it as a problem largely confined to the US. But, as I show in this empirically-informed political theory paper, it is now also becoming an Australian problem. I lay out and compare the character and extent of the problem in the US and Australia, then show how election conspiracism can, does and may undermine democracy in both settings. I do so by enlisting a proceduralist conception of democracy and democratic legitimacy in order to assess its harms and to comprehend them in relation to the purpose and function of elections in representative democracies. A key theme is to understand why Australia has proved to be more resilient to disinformation about the authenticity of electoral processes and outcomes.