Former Arizona GOP governor candidate Kari Lake, known for promoting unproven election conspiracies, will speak at a Michigan Republican conference.

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Who is Kari Lake?

Kari Lake, a former news anchor and Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, is scheduled to speak at the Michigan Republican Party’s statewide Leadership Conference, which will take place from September 22 to 24 at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Lake’s appearance, alongside filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, is part of the party’s embrace of voting conspiracies since electing election denier Kristina Karamo as party chair in February.

Kari Lake lost the Arizona governor’s race in 2022 to Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs by a margin of 17,000 votes. Despite experiencing multiple court defeats in her attempts to challenge the outcome, Lake persists in making baseless claims that her election was stolen.

Dinesh D’Souza, renowned for propagating conspiracy theories, directed and starred in the film ‘2000 Mules,’ which alleges the existence of a vague network of absentee ballot ‘mules’ in swing states like Michigan who supposedly stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump. However, these central claims of the movie have been widely discredited by experts.

The conference website of the Michigan GOP teases the announcement of additional speakers in the future. It asserts that these chosen speakers will challenge the status quo, propelling the party to new heights of excellence and cultural understanding as they prepare for the 2024 elections.

Nevertheless, embracing election denialism may prove to be an unsuccessful strategy. Nationally, election-denying candidates secured victory in fewer than 1 in 6 races for governor, attorney general, and secretary of state during the 2020 midterms, according to the nonpartisan watchdog States United Action. Furthermore, election-denying Republican candidates experienced an average loss of over 2 percentage points due to their promotion of false claims during the midterms, as indicated by a working paper from Stanford University.

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Despite these findings, the Michigan GOP continues to embrace voting conspiracies by inviting speakers like Dinesh D’Souza and Kari Lake. Both have falsely claimed that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election due to widespread voter fraud.

As the conference date approaches, the party’s stance on unproven election conspiracies and the influence of speakers like D’Souza and Lake could play a significant role in shaping the party’s direction and messaging leading up to the 2024 elections.