Election deniers go door-to-door to confront voters after losses

Anti-abortion activist Mark Gietzen has said he believes the 18-point defeat in early August of a ballot measure to ban abortion in Kansas was due to fraudulent voting. A partial recount confirmed the results, but Gietzen is now seeking to force a statewide recount.

Gietzen acknowledged to the Kansas City Star that the second recount was unlikely to change the outcome of the election, but said it was part of an effort to search for fraud.

But now Gietzen and his allies will be confronting voters at home in Kansas. They say their goal to find voters who don’t live at the address or say they didn’t cast a ballot under their name.

The practice of door-knocking in search of voter fraud, which began in the 2020 election, is ripe for disastrous problems, including violating voter intimidation laws. Elections specialists say it’s an unreliable way to audit actual votes and some voters will feel suspicious or defensive. And in some cases, the activists are allegedly wearing clothing or badges that look enough like government uniforms as to be deceiving.