Former President Donald Trump took to social media on Tuesday to question the legitimacy of the midterm elections in the swing state of Pennsylvania.  “Here we go again!”  He wrote.  “Fixed elections!”   

  Trump’s alleged evidence?  An article on a right-wing news website that showed no fraud.  Instead, the article raised unfounded suspicions about absentee ballot data that the article did not clearly explain.   

  In 2020, Trump and his allies made a prolonged effort to discredit the results of the presidential election in advance, spending months laying the groundwork for their false post-election claims that the election was stolen.  Now, in the weeks leading up to Election Day 2022, some Republicans have deployed similar—and equally dishonest—rhetoric.   

  Trump is not the only Republican trying to promote unfounded suspicions about the midterm elections in Pennsylvania, a state that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.   

  After Pennsylvania Deputy Chief Election Officer Leigh Chapman told NBC News last week that it could take “days” to complete the vote count, Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who has repeatedly promoted false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, he told a right-wing show monitored by the liberal organization Media Matters for America: “This is an attempt to be the solution.”   

  Is not.  It just takes time for the votes to be counted — especially, Chapman noted, because the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature has refused to pass a bill that would have allowed counties to begin processing mail-in ballots earlier than the morning of election day.   

  But other prominent Republicans rallied.  Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas tweeted a link to an article about Chapman’s comments and added: “Why is it only the blue-collar Democrats taking ‘days’ to count their votes?  The rest of the country manages to do it on election night.”   

  Even aside from the fact that big cities that tend to lean Democratic have far more votes to count than small rural counties that tend to lean Republican, Cruz’s claim is completely false.   

  Counties of all kinds across the country — including, as PolitiFact noted, some Republican counties in Cruz, Texas — did not finish counting their votes on election night.  In fact, it is impossible for many counties to have final counts on election night.   

  Even some of the most Republican states in the country count absentee ballots (or, in some cases, specific absentee ballots from members of the military and foreign nationals) that arrive days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked on Election Day.  And some states, including some led by Republicans, are giving voters days after Election Day to fix problems with their signatures or provide proof of ID they didn’t have on Election Day.   

  US election authorities do not declare winners or official vote totals on election night.  Instead, the media make unofficial projections based on incomplete evidence.   

  Challenges over the health of the Democratic candidate in the Pennsylvania Senate race, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, have also been used to cast preemptive doubt about the likely outcome.   

  After Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, some right-wing figures insisted that the election must have been stolen because Biden was such a poor candidate.  On Fox last week, as Media Matters noted, host Tucker Carlson made a similar argument about the Pennsylvania Senate race — suggesting people shouldn’t accept a Fetterman win because it would be “plainly unreasonable” for a candidate who had difficulties with the public.  speech and auditory processing from a stroke in May to prevail legally.   

  But there would be nothing suspicious about Fetterman’s victory in a state Biden won by more than 80,000 votes in 2020. Fetterman has led in many (though not all) polls — and polls have repeatedly found that her voters Pennsylvanians continue to view him far more favorably than they view his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz.   

  The city of Detroit, like other Democratic-dominated cities with large black populations, has been the target of false conspiracy theories in 2020 by Trump and others.  And now the Republican vying to lead Michigan’s primary is already questioning the validity of tens of thousands of Detroit ballots in 2022.   

  Less than two weeks before Election Day, Kristina Karamo, the 2020 Republican nominee for Michigan Secretary of State, filed a lawsuit asking the court to “stop” the use of absentee ballots in Detroit unless were taken in person.  at a clerk’s office and state that only those ballots obtained through personal solicitations may be “validly voted” in that election.  That request would potentially mean throwing out thousands of ballots already legally cast by Detroit residents — whose state constitution gives residents the right to request absentee ballots by mail.   

  Karamo’s attorney vaguely softened the request during closing arguments Friday, the Detroit News reported.  And other prominent Republicans have so far distanced themselves from the lawsuit.   

  However, the suit sets the stage for Karamo, who is trailing in the polls, to dismiss the legitimacy of a defeat as unfounded.   

  Other Republican candidates have vaguely hinted at the possibility of Democrats cheating in some way on Election Day or during the vote count.   

  Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told reporters this week that “we’ll see what happens” when it comes to accepting the results of his re-election race, the Washington Post reported, adding: “I mean, something is going to happen in Election Day ?  Do the Democrats have anything up their sleeves?’   

  The Daily Beast reported that Blake Masters, the Republican Senate candidate in a tight race in Arizona, told a story at an October event about how he can’t prove it’s not true if he defeats Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly with 30,000 votes , unnamed people won’t “only find 40,000” for Kelly.  He had told a similar story at an event in June.   

  There is no basis for the suggestion that tens of thousands of fraudulent votes could be added to any state’s tally.  But Masters’ comment, like Karamo’s lawsuit, achieves the effect of many of Trump’s 2020 campaign stories: Republican early voters skeptical of any outcome that doesn’t go their way.