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Andrea Austria / Media Matters

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Right-wing radio hosts in Wisconsin and other swing states are priming their audiences for election denial

With baseless suggestions of noncitizens voting, illegal ballot harvesting, and manufactured votes, Wisconsin radio host Vicki McKenna and others are telling listeners to reject a Trump loss before all the votes have even been cast

Written by Emma Mae Weber

Published

Updated

Update (11/4/24): This article has been updated with additional research.

Right-wing radio hosts in Wisconsin and other swing states – including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — are falsely suggesting election fraud is already taking place in the 2024 election. 

Hosts including Wisconsin’s Vicki McKenna have been warning about mass voting by noncitizens being part of “the cheat.” Other Wisconsin radio hosts such as Dan O’Donnell and Mark Belling, as well as right-wing hosts from other swing states, are further contributing to a flood of misinformation this election cycle, including false claims of voter fraud and a “stolen” election.

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  • Right-wing radio has a history of supporting election denialism, including in Wisconsin

    • In 2016 and 2020, right-wing radio hosts helped push skepticism about election security. Ahead of the 2016 election, Rush Limbaugh criticized early voting and said, “What do you mean elections aren’t rigged? Of course they are!” In 2020, Philadelphia-based radio host Dom Giordano told listeners that people “will break the law” to defeat Trump, declaring, “Each day, each hour that goes by, I worry about fraud.” [Media Matters, 8/6/20, 11/5/20, 10/17/16]
    • In 2020, right-wing media and the Trump campaign focused on dissuading their supporters from voting by mail; that’s changed for 2024 as Trump and the GOP launched “swamp the vote” to promote mail-in voting and early voting. Right-wing radio hosts are attempting to balance election denial — often linked to attacks on mail-in voting — with encouraging their conservative listeners to vote early. [Media Matters, 5/22/20; The Hill, 6/4/24; PBS, 5/17/24] 
    • In the 2020 election, “two conservative attorneys who helped formulate the Trump team’s attempt to overturn the election results with fake electors, saw Wisconsin’s far-right talk radio hosts as key allies in spreading their bogus theories.” Vicki McKenna, Dan O’Donnell, and Mark Belling were each mentioned in texts between Trump lawyers Ken Chesebro and Jim Troupis. Since then, the hosts have continued spreading election misinformation. [The Guardian, 3/22/24] 

  • Wisconsin radio host Vicki McKenna has repeatedly pushed election misinformation, fearmongered about left-wing violence, and encouraged listeners to “police the voter rolls in your area”

    • Broadcasting from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee earlier this year, WISN radio host Vicki McKenna suggested Democrats will “steal the election.” McKenna complained that liberals and the media “say it’s the Republicans who want to steal the election, they want to cancel elections after they steal an election. I know, it’s absolutely rich — it’s called projection in psychology terms. This is classic projection.” Conservatives in 2024 have already begun laying the groundwork for election denial. [WISN, The Vicki McKenna Show, 7/15/24; Democracy Docket, 7/1/24; Reuters, 9/30/24]
    • McKenna said Trump’s win in the 2024 election depends “on whether or not we’ll get ahead enough of the cheat.” McKenna said that “if the election were held today — because the cheat's not established yet, the fraud is not in place — Trump would win. He'd win. Will he win on Election Day? That all depends on whether or not we’ll get ahead enough of the cheat." [WISN, The Vicki McKenna Show, 10/16/24]
    • McKenna encouraged demonstrations to stop the count of votes after Election Day. Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff said “If any state is going to announce that they're going to take days to count votes, I think you're just going to see demonstrations in the street, and that's going to stop any potential steal.” McKenna replied, “They should be.” [WISN, The Vicki McKenna Show, 10/16/24]
    • McKenna: “I'm worried about early voting. I'm worried about the steal. I'm worried about the mass importation of illegal aliens. I'm worried about the manipulations that are going on with lawfare.” [WISN, The Vicki McKenna Show, 10/21/24]
    • McKenna accused the Justice Department of protecting an “election harvesting operation” and suggested Democrats are “cheating.” First, McKenna accused the Department of Justice of “election interference” for investigating a mayor who improperly removed a ballot drop box, claiming the DOJ took action to “threaten anybody who just simply wants to follow the letter of the law” and “get in the way of our election harvesting operation.” Later, McKenna claimed Democrats “don't want voter ID because voter ID stops cheating” and “don't want election integrity because election integrity laws stop cheating.” [WISN, The Vicki McKenna Show, 10/22/24, 10/22/24; The Associated Press, 10/3/24]
    • McKenna accused Democrats of “seeding the ground” for “resistance 2.0, for Women's March 2.0, for cities burning — BLM 2.0 or George Floyd 2.0 or whatever else it is” if Trump wins. Guest John Davidson from The Federalist said that “the Democrats and the Harris campaign are preparing the ground for violence.” [WISN, The Vicki McKenna Show, 10/23/24]
    • McKenna encouraged listeners to “police the voter rolls in your area” and to go “100 feet from an election from a polling location, stand with very large signs that say in Spanish ‘noncitizens are not permitted to vote in the state of Wisconsin.’” She said, “Maybe you have a way to police the voter rolls in your area. Maybe you have a way to secure things better in your area. … If there's someone out there who can do this, please do this: Have someone, and I think it's a 100 feet from an election from a polling location, stand with very large signs that say in Spanish ‘noncitizens are not permitted to vote in the state of Wisconsin.’ Just as a big sign. They'll cry. You'll drive them nuts.” [WISN, The Vicki McKenna Show, 10/18/24]
    • McKenna said, “The only thing that is in the way of my 100% comfort in predict[ing] a blowout in all the battleground states is cheating.” McKenna amplified a story from the Conservative Political Action Conference about supposedly illegal “ballot harvesting,” claiming “They're going to get away with a certain level of cheating, so I'm not sure that the story about the mass dump of ballots in a Milwaukee ballot box has gotten enough attention.” [WISN, The Vicki McKenna Show, 10/31/24; Washington Examiner, 10/31/24]
    • McKenna claimed, “The cheat has been on in Wisconsin since I've been on the air in Wisconsin, and I got on the air in Wisconsin since 1997 … what we realized is the different way the Democrats have operationalized it.” According to McKenna, despite Democratic machinations “the cheat” can be defeated and that the goal is “to make sure that when we win this election, when we come back as a legislature, we stop it for good once and for all.” [WISN, The Vicki McKenna Show, 10/31/24]
    • McKenna interviewed author Brandon Weichert to discuss “a major cyberattack that’s going to hit the United States somewhere around Tuesday” — Election Day — to prevent Trump from being reelected. Weichert warned that our own government would target voting machines, the power grid, and our water supply; all so that Trump won’t become president. [WISN, The Vicki McKenna Show, 10/31/24]

  • Other right-wing radio hosts in Wisconsin have warned about a “massive epidemic of noncitizens voting” or claimed election officials “are accepting illegal votes”

    • WISN radio host Dan O’Donnell said, “There is a finite number of ballots that can be reasonably manufactured or in some way fraudulently delivered and cast. I call that the fraud margin.” Encouraging his conservative listeners to cast their ballots early, O’Donnell estimated the “fraud margin” is “1% of the total vote” and advised listeners to “just assume Democrats are going to be able to manufacture” that many. [WISN, The Dan O’Donnell Show, 10/22/24]
    • O’Donnell suggested there “very well could be” a “massive epidemic of noncitizens voting” in Wisconsin. O’Donnell said, “The Wisconsin Elections Commission, I am told by multiple sources, has not adequately trained poll workers on how to spot a noncitizen's ID. I am not going to lie to you and say that there is going to be a massive epidemic of noncitizens voting in elections, but there very well could be.” [WISN, The Dan O’Donnell Show, 10/22/24] 
    • Ranting about “fraudulent voter registrations” reported in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, O’Donnell assured his listeners that the Trump campaign won’t “make the same mistakes that they did in 2020 and just assume that Democrats were going to run an election fairly.” “I can guess which political party this would have benefitted,” O’Donnell said, “But lest you think that Republicans in the Trump campaign are going to make the same mistakes that they did in 2020 and just assume that Democrats were going to run an election fairly and, you know, do everything on the up and up, they are not. They understand that you need to be watching for every possible trick in the book.” [WISN, The Dan O’Donnell Show, 10/25/24; CNN, 10/29/24] 
    • O’Donnell warned of ballot harvesting, noncitizens voting, and he fearmongered about mail-in ballots being stolen from apartment buildings en masse. O’Donnell cited CPAC’s claim that 500 ballots were illegally harvested in Milwaukee and claimed, “Those 500 votes that were allegedly stuffed into a drop box outside of Milwaukee's City Hall, those are likely going to count. This is why eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and fair elections in this country.” [WISN, The Dan O’Donnell Show, 10/31/24]
    • WISN radio host Mark Belling baselessly alleged that noncitizens were voting with state ID cards, adding that “the majority of the people with these cards, who would be voting illegally, they are voting for Democrats.” Belling said: “There is every reason to believe that some clerks are accepting these, meaning they are accepting illegal votes by noncitizens.” Belling also claimed: “I think they don’t want to say no to this because they want to get — they believe that the majority of the people with these cards, who would be voting illegally, they are voting for Democrats.” [WISN, The Mark Belling Show, 10/24/24, 10/24/24]
    • On The Mark Belling Show, guest host and former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke argued that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, declaring, “I'm that guy. Election denier. Yes. I am.” Clark warned his audience of being “too giddy” about Trump winning this election because “Democrat elites” have “got something up their sleeve. They always do. They always come up with something new.” [WISN, The Mark Belling Show, 10/31/24]

  • Right-wing radio hosts in other key swing states are also pushing election misinformation

    • In Arizona, radio host Garret Lewis claimed the Pima County deputy recorder  “is trying to cover up being caught trying to steal the election.” Complaining about mail-in ballots and early voter rolls on his show, Lewis argued that Pima County officials “want to cheat” but “got caught.” [Twitter/X, 10/21/24; KNST, The Afternoon Addiction with Garret Lewis, 10/21/24]
    • Lewis speculated that an announcement that 218,000 Arizona voters who registered with driver's licenses issued before October 1996 never showed proof of citizenship was done “on purpose” to “actually suppress the vote.” Lewis said, “This can't be just incompetence. It's done on purpose.” He later added, “I think this is complete voter suppression. Like, I think the Democrats are so desperate that this is what they’re doing now.” [KNST, The Afternoon Addiction with Garret Lewis, 10/1/24; KJZZ, 9/30/24]
    • In Georgia, hosts Kim Peterson and Pete Davis pushed the conspiracy theory that “Dominion voting machines are hacked” and suggested “it's all lying and cheating.” The hosts said that “Third World countries can hand-count millions of ballots and have you the results that night, and we have these computers and machines in all these states, including Georgia, saying, ‘Well, we're not going to have the election results that night.’” They also complained that “the poor Indians can get a voter ID, but poor Americans can't? It's all lying and cheating.” Dominion voting machines were at the heart of multiple debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories from right-wing media, including false claims they were flipping votes.  [WFOM, The Kimmer Show, 10/21/24; Media Matters, 2/16/23, 11/13/20, 4/18/23, 5/2/23]
    • In Michigan, host Steve Gruber interviewed Jerome Corsi — a conspiracy theorist and Roger Stone associate — to speculate that “cryptographic algorithms” are designed to “steal the election of 2024.” Gruber opened the show by saying that he voted early but “the real question still comes down to do you trust ‘em? Do you trust the folks at the state level and different places to do the right thing, to conduct elections honestly?” [WJIM, The Steve Gruber Show, 10/18/24; NPR, 1/3/19] 
    • Philadelphia radio host Chris Stigall expressed frustration with right-wing figures “making a living saying” 2024 will be “stolen” but later said that he is “nervous” about “last-minute shenanigans” and suggested election officials could “shut down the count.” Stigall said “There are people on, quote, ‘our side’ who are again making a living running around saying, ‘Nope, no way, not going to happen, not going to work, she’s going to rig it, it's stolen.’ I say be very leery, OK? I just say be very cautious of people, particularly people with big platforms, who are supposedly on our side running around saying that.” He said later, “Will there be last-minute shenanigans? Will they shut down the count? These secretaries of state saying, ‘Oh, it could take days for us to know them.’ You know, it makes us all nervous.” During the 2020 election, Stigall was a vocal election denier, speculating over votes in cities like Philadelphia which normally lean Democratic. [The Chris Stigall Podcast, 10/23/24; Media Matters, 11/5/20]