With midterm elections approaching, John Oliver discusses what happens after the votes are in, how some elected officials might try to negate legitimate election results, and which teletubby would taste best. 

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-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ We're actually gonna dive straight into our main story tonight, which concerns voting, a practice that was once sold to youth with the slogan, vote or die.

And given the state of politics right now, for the first time, I'm requesting more information on the second option.

Specifically, with the midterms now just 2 days away, we wanted to focus on a dangerous trend among Republican candidates, denying the legitimacy of the last election.

The fake news, big tech, and blue state liberals stole the election from President Trump.

The 2020 election was a totally rigged election.

In fact, quite frankly, every election since I think George Washington, there's been some kind of a defect in the system.

You could say Biden won the presidency kind of like O.J.'s innocence.

I'll say this, those people are ridiculous, but they're having a really good time.

I have never been as happy as he is hearing an O.J.

Simpson joke in 2021, and I have 2 children.

And the thing is, those people are not alone.

A majority of Republican nominees for House, Senate, or key statewide offices this year deny or question the 2020 election results.

And some, like this guy, deny it while trying to add a bit of spectacle.

Hey, Mike Collins here, your pro-Trump America First trucker, running for Congress here in Georgia 10.

Well, I understand, though, Joe Biden was in town yesterday to talk about our elections.

It seems that he and Kamala Harris called anyone who disagreed with the federal hijacking of this election are racist.

Let me tell you what Georgians really believe.

You see, Georgians are sick and tired of weak-kneed, spineless politicians who won't fight for Trump, get to the bottom of 2020, and fix our elections.

Well, if they won't do it, Mike Collins will.

Your brain wants to focus on pro-Trump, America first trucker, but then wonders, why is he dressed like the world's angriest target employee?

Before noticing, wait, is that a garbage can labeled voting machine?

Then also labeled cast ballot, as if they knew that the first label wasn't convincing anyone, but thought that the second 1 might.

Then it takes a minute to focus on the subtle but unmistakable edit point before the explosion, breaking the illusion that that was shot in a single take.

Then finally, your brain says, hey, he opened with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris think I'm a racist.

Anyway, that man is completely ridiculous, and given the district where he's running, he's almost certainly going to win on Tuesday.

But it is worth dwelling on the promise that he and those other candidates are making, that they are going to fix our elections.

Because that speaks to a real problem here, which is that a troubling number of election deniers are running for jobs that can play key roles in administering elections in their states.

In fact, over half the country has an election denier running to oversee their elections, and many of them are expected to win.

And look, we've talked before about voter suppression on this show, whether that's through voter ID laws, felony disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, or restrictions on mail-in voting.

But those tactics take place before you cast your ballot.

Tonight, we're gonna focus on election subversion, which typically happens after the votes are in.

It's a strategy to negate legitimate election results by simply refusing to accept them.

Trump famously tried to subvert the last election, and some current candidates are promising that if elected, they'll be able to guarantee a certain result in the future.

He leads the America First Secretary of State coalition, And if they win, he's been pretty clear about what that would mean.

When my coalition of Secretary of State candidates around the country get elected, we're gonna fix the whole country.

And President Trump is gonna be president again in

Look, no wonder Trump likes that message.

Also, it probably doesn't hurt that it's coming from a guy who looks like a smaller, paler version of him.

He looks like the Pokemon that Trump evolves from.

--LAUGHTER --So if the plan is this overt, and with potential consequences this dire for this election, the next election, and way beyond, tonight, let's talk about election subversion.

And to understand what we're facing, let's revisit briefly some of the chaos following the last election.

As you undoubtedly remember, After Trump's loss, he tried a lot of tactics to swing things back into his favor, including calling Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State of Georgia, to ask him for just a small favor.

votes, which is 1 more than we have, because we won the state.

It's still incredible to listen to that, and a cold chill ran down my urethra, merely hearing his voice again.

Seemingly forgetting at 1 point both how many votes he needs and the word votes.

It's genuinely amazing to listen to someone attempt a coup with the same focused energy of a dad struggling to remember his family's McDonald's order.

Yeah, can I get a spicy, crispy, crunchy chicken, and, 2, do you have something called son of a baconator here?

Are you the Whopper place, or are you the other 1?

Yeah, yeah, I'm in the wrong place, aren't I?

--LAUGHTER --Now, thankfully, Raffensperger declined Trump's request, which left him to fight his battles in the courts, where he lost over 60 lawsuits challenging the election results.

He then famously tried at the last minute to bully Mike Pence into refusing to certify Biden's win, including a phone call where Trump called him a wimp and the P-word, which I know is supposed to be pussy, but to be honest, the P-word sounds like the phrase Geppetto's therapist uses to talk about Pinocchio.

--LAUGHTER --And while I'm sure that you remember All of that, there were also smaller, much lesser known incidents, where people further down the chain also tried thumbing the scale, like in Wayne County, Michigan, where Trump supporters raised bullshit claims about voting irregularities in Detroit, and a Republican member of the county board of canvassers there proposed this simple solution.

Communities other than the city of Detroit.

That move outraged the Democrats on the board and speaker after speaker on the board's public Zoom meeting.

You have extracted a black city out of a county and said the only ones that are at fault and at issue is the city of Detroit, where 80 percent of the people who reside here are African-American.

Generally, when a white person says, I have a compromise and starts doing electoral fractions that count black people less, those haven't been great moments for democracy.

Now, that woman later claimed that she merely wanted more investigation of those Detroit votes before she'd agreed to certify them.

And while after pushback from Michigan's governor and secretary of state, she ultimately voted to certify Biden's win, after Trump called her and a fellow Republican board member, they both tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to rescind their votes.

Meanwhile, a few days later, at Michigan's state canvassing board, there was a similar stalemate.

Its 4 members were evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, 1 of whom refused to certify Biden's win, which meant it was all on this guy to do the right thing, which, thankfully, he did with this little speech.

As John Adams once said, we are a government of laws, not men.

And this board needs to adhere to that principle here today.

This board must do its part to uphold the rule of law and comply with our legal duty to certify this election.

A boring guy with glasses quoting John Adams, upheld democracy.

I'm just saying, get Bradley Whitford in there and add some stirring music, and you've got the kind of scene that will make Aaron Sorkin come until he passed out.

--LAUGHTER --CLAPS HANDS And the thing is, those are clearly just 2 very local examples.

But in state after state, we were very lucky that a small group of individuals in key positions stood firm.

Arizona's Republican governor, Doug Ducey, was literally in the middle of certifying his state's win for Biden, when he got a phone call from Trump, But he put his phone aside and continued signing the paperwork.

And I have to say, watching someone screen your call is 1 of the most devastating things a human being can possibly experience, and I'm so glad that it happened to Donald Trump.

So, To recap, the guardrails to protect our democracy were heavily tested in 2020.

While some major weaknesses were exposed, they thankfully held.

But, since then, there has been a concerted effort to attack the people and institutions that got into Trump's way, shifting the landscape in ways that could make future subversion attempts even more dangerous.

Now, for 1 thing, the fervor around election fraud has been stubbornly persistent, with a recent poll showing 61% of Republicans believe Joe Biden only won due to voter fraud.

Which is just ridiculous, given that again, there is no evidence of that.

This just isn't 1 of those unknowable things that will never get resolved, like which 1 of the Teletubbies, when cooked properly, would taste best.

And I know what you're thinking, because it's what I'm thinking too.

Every 1 of us is pretty sure that on a rainy day in January, absolutely nothing would taste better than some braised po' over rice.

Of course, everyone's pretty sure that a po' that simmers for an hour and a half after getting properly blanched and caramelized would melt in your mouth on that January Sunday.

We will never definitively know because you can't eat Teletubbies.

So, All we are left with is gut instinct, unlike election results, which are actually verified.

Sleep with 1 eye open, you tasty plump clown.

Or I'll have your thick, salted thighs for my Christmas feast.

If you're not a regular consumer of conservative media, you may not realize the extent to which Biden stole the election has taken hold and on the basis of incredibly flimsy evidence.

Perhaps best exemplified by 2, 000 Mules, a documentary from conservative bullshit artist Dinesh D'Souza, which is just wall-to-wall nonsense.

The 2020 elections were 1 of the most corrupt in history.

We tracked 2, 000 mules making multiple ballot drops.

mules, the shocking new movie from Dinesh D'Souza.

Philadelphia alone, we've identified more than 1100 mules.

A person picking up ballots and running them to the drop boxes.

Mysterious handoffs in dark alleys, people with bad reputations.

It's nice that we finally have an answer to the question, what if the wire was created by virgins?

The central idea of this movie is the claim that there were vote mules who repeatedly visited ballot boxes and deposited suspect ballots.

And that Dinesh and his friends have identified them using cell phone data.

And it would take the rest of this show to debunk the movie's claims point by point.

But very quickly, there is no way by just using cell phone data to know whether someone visited a Dropbox or was just in the vicinity of 1, particularly since those boxes were installed in high traffic areas.

Meanwhile, the only map that seems to show someone driving around dumping ballots is fake, and another map supposedly showing a dropbox site is actually a stock photo of Moscow, with a third 1, just the same Moscow map again, but rotated 90 degrees.

And finally, the whole theory rests on these mules repeatedly going to multiple drop boxes.

But while they show lots of footage of drop boxes within the movie, none of them show the same person more than once.

Instead, the filmmakers breathlessly scrutinize footage for clues that they claim, with 0 proof, are evidence of crime, including voters wearing gloves, you know, during a pandemic, or taking photos as they deposit their ballots.

I'm gonna show you a full minute from the movie, where they work themselves up over absolutely nothing.

So, the People in line are waiting to go in and vote early.

Okay, now you've got some other people gonna walk up.

This lady doesn't care, but this guy, this next guy cares.

He's got the ballots under his arm already.

Now he's got the rest that he pulled out of the bag.

And he's gonna get his camera ready to take the pictures as he puts them in there.

If you consider the brazenness of this, right?

There's people sitting there watching you cheat.

But it's difficult for them to know what to do.

Except observe and maybe say, -"What's going on here?

They wonder, what does this all even mean if this is happening in broad daylight and nobody's doing anything to stop it.

-♪ ♪ -♪ But that's not damning evidence.

And we need to be absolutely clear on something here.

The guy in line that they're talking about, who's supposedly shocked about the voter fraud that he's witnessing, he's looking at the dog!

The only reason I can focus on what's going on there right now is because, thankfully, they blurred that dog!

Otherwise, I, like him, would be gawking at it and asking, -"Who's a good boy?" until the polls closed.

This movie is astonishingly dumb, but it has a real following.

At least 50 candidates have promoted or cited it.

And it, and conspiracy theories like it, have contributed to what's been called a sea of pervasive distrust.

With deniers now channeling that distrust to burrow into every level of the election process.

They're small neighborhood-level units centered around polling places.

Political parties organize in precincts and local governments hire and recruit poll workers there.

Trump's allies have been working extremely hard to make sure that they are well-represented at that level, particularly Steve Bannon, pictured here, drowned.

Who has made his precinct strategy a constant refrain.

What we need right now, the way the Republican Party is structured is that you can go to a precinct, become a precinct committeeman, and then you've got real standing.

We're building an army of the awakened, and we are taking over precinct strategies, we're taking over election boards, canvassing boards, we're flooding the zone with poll workers, poll watchers, election judges, people in the room.

It's gonna be MAGA in the room counting the votes, because only MAGA can count fair.

Set aside, only MAGA can count fair, and just spare a moment for his room decal, which features an actual sign reading, there are no conspiracies, but there are no coincidences, a quote attributed to Stephen K.

And while you might think that there is nothing douchier than quoting yourself, it turns out you're wrong about that.

It's doing that while also slightly trying to give your name a fancy makeover.

No 1 is buying that because we looked and the K is for Kevin.

You're just making your name even sadder.

But Bannon's strategy seems to have paid off.

ProPublica found last year that in 41 key battleground counties, there are at least 8, 500 new Republican precinct officers or equivalent officials, with no similar surge from the Democrats.

Bannon and other Republicans have also been encouraging people to take on jobs in polling stations while issuing some troubling advice.

At 1 training session for poll workers and watchers in Michigan, run by a Republican activist group, participants were told to call 911 and contact sheriffs to involve law enforcement in any election-related complaints, which isn't great, is it?

You should clearly only call 911 with an actual emergency, like, you know, a car accident or a break-in or when someone takes off their shoes and socks on a plane.

Like, yeah, I know we're in the sky, but I'm asking you to get a police helicopter and shoot us down.

And if you're thinking that election supervisors won't stand for shenanigans like that, you should know many have been driven away.

1 investigation found that in 5 highly contested battleground states, roughly 1 in 3 top election administrators left the job after the 2020 election.

And when you consider the kind of personal messages that some received last time, You do understand why they may not want to do it again.

You all know it, and you are complicit as if.

Perhaps cuts and bullets will soon arrive, " gave my address.

years ago, the founding Caucasian Fathers of America gave us the Second Amendment.

We're coming after you and every motherfucker that stole this election with our second amendment.

You're gonna be served lead, you fucking, fucking enemy communist...

-♪ ♪ Holy shit, those messages are horrifying.

And by the way, founding Caucasian fathers is just 1 hell of a phrase.

Because it either comes from the mouth of a racist or someone with strong opinions on the casting decisions in Hamilton because they are a racist.

Reuters actually identified more than 900 threats made against election administrators since the last election, so it is no wonder so many qualified people are leaving.

And their replacements are sometimes troubling.

Take Nye County, Nevada, where their top county election official was replaced by this guy, Mark Kumpf, who not only said that he believes Trump won the 2020 election, he's also promoted 2, 000 mules and has amplified some of the baseless hysteria around Dominion voting machines.

And look, we've addressed voting machines before on this show.

They do have some vulnerabilities, but importantly, those vulnerabilities can be counteracted by having a physical paper trail and doing risk-limiting audits after the fact.

Also, There is no proof that any machines have ever been compromised in a U.S.

But Kampf defends election deniers strongly, and he will not budge on it when pressed.

If you don't believe the system was legitimate in 2020, and created an error where 30, 000-plus votes were not counted in the state correctly.

I don't see it as being problematic at all because I'm trying to increase voter confidence in the election.

In the election space, The machines that count go through multiple layers of security.

And this is regulated throughout the country.

There are a lot of people, again, the voters in this county don't believe that.

And whether it's true or not, their perception is their reality.

Whether it's true or not, their perception is their reality.

I have got to say, that is a risky stance for a guy whose name is almost Mein Kampf.

But I've seen his name written down hundreds of times while working on this piece, and every single time, my brain auto-corrects it to MindKampf, and eventually, my perception will become reality.

I'm just saying, if my last name were Kampf, I definitely wouldn't give my baby a four-letter name that starts with an M.

It'd be like meeting someone named Earl Harbor or Holly Korst.

It feels like their parents just went out of their way to fuck with them and all of us.

Kampf has suggested that all ballots should now be hand-counted.

But, experts will tell you that while hand-counting is an important tool in recounts and audits, as a way of verifying the machine count, tallying entire elections by hand would cause chaos and make results less accurate, not more.

And sure enough, early voting in that county has been a spectacular mess, with the AP observing 2 groups of 5 people, spending about 3 hours each counting just 50 ballots.

With mismatched tallies, leading to recounts and occasionally more recounts, and 1 volunteer lamenting, I can't believe it's taking 2 hours to get through 25 ballots.

And yeah, if only there was a fucking machine that could help you guys with that.

And that is just 1 election denier at a low level wreaking havoc.

Just look at Arizona, a state that Biden won by an extremely narrow margin.

But, thanks to their then-governor doing 1 of the most brutal call screenings of all time, things didn't go off the rails.

And the Republican nominee to replace him is running ads like this.

Hi, Arizona, I'm Carrie Lake, the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor.

If you're watching this ad right now, it means you're in the middle of watching a fake news program.

Because they won't even cover the biggest story out there, the rigged election of

The election was not rigged, and the news did cover both the recounts and the lawsuits.

Plus, if you just saw that ad for the first time on this show, you're clearly not watching it on a fake news program.

You're watching it because you left the TV on after the White Lotus.

-♪ I'm a man of my word ♪ -♪ I'm a man of my word ♪ And that ad, which includes footage from 2, 000 mules, by the way, is actually tame compared to some of the other things that Laker said, because she's called for the imprisonment of the current Secretary of State, and said that if she didn't win her primary, it'd be because there's some cheating going on, and then after winning it, it's just that her supporters had simply outvoted the fraud.

Which is basically, if I lose, it's rigged, if I win, it's fine.

Meaning that she's approaching elections with the same objectivity and nuance of a five-year-old inventing a game in real time.

Unless you have the most tokens, then it's who can hold their breath the longest.

Unless you can, then it's a jumping contest.

-♪ ♪ -♪ But it gets worse for Arizona, because the Republican nominee for Secretary of State there is Mark Fincham, who, as you can see, wakes up every day to cosplay as a cowboy accountant.

And he seems pretty unlikely to willingly certify a Democratic win in his state, given that he said this.

Would you ever accept that a Democrat could win Arizona, or do you just not think that's possible?

I have a hard time believing that's possible.

Everywhere I go, the vast majority of people still show support for President Trump.

But that might just be because you are going to places where there are supporters of Donald Trump.

Is there any chance a Democratic candidate for president can win Arizona in

I-I genuinely don't know what's more annoying there, the fact that he answered a legitimate question with a prop, or that he apparently tells people no so often, he needed a special fun button for it.

Although between that, his talking Trump doll, and his novelty desk sign, it's slightly heartwarming to know that a Spencer's Gifts in Arizona is staying afloat, thanks to the compulsive purchases of 1 supremely weird individual.

But the thing is, Quiet Earp over there has openly told supporters in a fundraising email that if he'd been in power in 2020, we would have won, plain and simple.

And in a debate, he even brainstormed 1 scenario of how that could have happened.

Knowing what we know today, there are certain counties that should have been set aside as irredeemably compromised.

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Election Subversion: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)