Drop boxes now key to election conspiracy theories

HARTFORD, CONN. >> A woman approaches a drop box in the dark with what appears to be handfuls of ballots. At a different drop box, someone else is seen making multiple trips to insert ballots. At yet another, the same car stops on at least three separate occasions, with different people stepping out and heading to the box.

It’s not a trailer for the latest conspiracy movie about rigged elections. Instead, the video footage has become central to a real-world controversy over potential fraud involving ballot drop boxes, a favorite target of rightwing conspiracy theorists since former President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.

The accusations of drop box fraud are not coming from those pushing fringe election claims or from skeptical Republicans who have long favored eliminating or severely restricting use of the boxes. They are being made by Democrats — two candidates vying for mayor in Connecticut’s largest city, in a heavily Democratic state that began allowing drop boxes to be used during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Republicans have seized on the spat, which is now headed to a legal showdown that could result in a new election, to say it validates their concerns that drop boxes are ripe for fraud.

State Rep. Doug Dubitsky, a Republican, evoked the widely debunked movie “2000 Mules” during a legislative debate over the controversy surrounding the Bridgeport mayor’s race.

“How do we know that it’s only Bridgeport?” said Dubitsky, who represents an area of the state that has grown more conservative in the Trump era. “This exact same thing could be happening in every single municipality in this state. We should get rid of these boxes completely.”

On the surface, the controversy is a local matter: Two candidates are accusing each other of fraud in a municipal election. But its ripple effects travel far beyond the city of 148,000 and could have implications for the elections next year across the country.

Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has been doubling down on his lies about his loss in the 2020 election as he faces criminal charges related to his attempts to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win. Despite mounds of evidence showing the election was fair and accurate, a solid majority of Republicans still believe it was not.