Election experts are sounding the alarm that swing state vote-counting procedures Donald Trump used to fuel his baseless claims of election fraud in 2020 remain intact and could again be seized upon by the former president to undermine the 2024 vote. Such a Trump delegitimization effort would almost certainly benefit from a right-wing media ecosystem even less willing to rebut Trump’s election lies than it was in 2020.

“Experts warn that most swing states' vote counting and certification procedures could again extend beyond Election Day,” Axios reported earlier this week. Election officials in key states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could take days to finish counting absentee ballots and determine the winner of a close election because their Republican-controlled state legislatures refused to pass legislation allowing them to begin processing mail-in votes before Election Day.

In 2020, Trump and his media allies took advantage of this legally-mandated slow pace of vote-counting — and the “red mirage” phenomenon, in which the Republican candidate leads in Election Day results only to be overtaken by the Democratic advantage in mail-in votes — to baselessly claim the election was being rigged against him. 

Not everyone on the right was willing to play along. Political analyst Chris Stirewalt stressed in 2022 testimony before the January 6 House select committee that as Fox’s politics editor during the 2020 presidential race, he and some of his colleagues had “gone to pains” to ensure that the network’s viewers were aware that Republican leads on Election Day could be overtaken as election officials counted mail-in ballots. 

Stirewalt explained to the committee that while this “red mirage” happens often, such preparation was necessary “because the Trump campaign and the president had made it clear that they were going to try to exploit this anomaly.”

A November 3, 2020, memo from Stirewalt’s Fox News Decision Desk team, released through the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against the network, made clear to Fox employees that some “key states will look ‘too Red’ in the early hours -- and will ‘Shift Blue’ as the night (and days) proceed.”

“Another possibility is that because some key states will not count many mail ballots until later this week, the presidential race call could come AFTER election night,” the memo further stated. “This outcome would indicate a tight race, especially in the Rust Belt states, but it does NOT mean that there are problems with the integrity of the vote count.”

Several Fox personalities and guests ignored that guidance and followed Trump in using his diminishing Election Night lead as potential evidence of fraud.

But if Trump reruns the same attack on the election’s legitimacy — and he has given every indication that he plans to do so — Fox’s support could prove even more uniform.

Stirewalt is gone, forced out by Fox in early 2021 as a scapegoat after the network came under fire from Trump for its early (but ultimately vindicated) call of Arizona for Joe Biden. So is Bill Sammon, another Decision Desk leader whose head Rupert Murdoch demanded in order to “be a big message with Trump people.” Other Fox “news side” reporters whose election reporting was too accurate for top executives subsequently left the network.

What remains are willing Trumpist apparatchiks like anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, who in 2020 supported slow-walking state calls to keep viewers happy, and total propagandists like hosts Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters. 

That didn’t end up mattering for the 2022 midterms, since Democrats in the relevant states won handily. But if the 2024 race turns into a Rust Belt nailbiter, expect Fox to go all-in to help Trump delegitimize the vote.