“What about the election fraud?” the 69-year-old Pryor resident asked. “How do we know you’d even be elected if we don’t know our votes are being counted?”
Lahmeyer proceeded to go on a lengthy rant full of debunked lies, half-truths and conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 election.
“The issue is the machines — and they’re all made with the same exact software from your favorite person, Bill Gates,” he said repeating a lie that has been debunked many times over. “These machines don’t count like 1, 2, 3, 4 — they count using an algorithm, they use projections, but who is the scientist who determined that algorithm?”
Lahmeyer is among the most vocal election deniers in the state. He is not alone in echoing and amplifying lies that have been disproven repeatedly — including in court.
An Oklahoma Watch review of statements, social media posts and campaign literature from legislative and congressional revealed more than a dozen candidates who have repeated lies that widespread voter fraud cost Donald Trump the 2020 election.
And as many Republicans are latching on in hopes of winning Trump’s endorsement — something that led to mixed results in early primary states like Pennsylvania and Georgia — the coming months could prove to be a test of whether voters accept or reject those pushing these lies.
In 2021, Roberts sought a forensic and independent audit of 2020 general election results in three counties including Oklahoma County, making unfounded claims that fraud occurred in other states. That request was denied.
“There are candidates literally campaigning on this issue,” said Matthew Motta, an assistant professor who studies misinformation and politics at Oklahoma State University. “That’s consequential because it keeps the big lie in the news and on voters’ minds and it kind of reinforces the big lie by being a metric by which they choose their preferred candidate.”
It doesn’t take long to find election-denying candidates. Many are already in the Legislature.
After the 2020 election, 37 Oklahoma lawmakers — nearly 20% of the Legislature — signed letters asking Congress to overturn the election results prior to the Jan. 6 electoral college certification vote.
In a press release sent by the taxpayer-funded Oklahoma State Senate Communication Division, Dahm wrote “Jan. 6 was not an insurrection no matter how much the media mouthpieces try to gaslight us by saying it was.”
That statement runs counter to hours of testimony, video and other evidence gathered by investigators in the wake of the insurrection.