Trends and Harms of Election Denialism: The United States and Australia
Date
2026
Authors
Hill, L.
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Journal article
Citation
Representation, 2026; 1-22
Statement of Responsibility
Lisa Hill
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Abstract
‘Trends in Election Denialism: the United States and Australia’ ‘Election denialism’ denotes the claim that an election has been ‘stolen’ or rigged either by private individuals or, more disturbingly, by election authorities. Although an increasingly common form of political disinformation, we tend to think of it as a problem largely confined to the US. But, as I show in this empirically-informed political theory paper, it is now also becoming an Australian problem. I lay out and compare the character and extent of the problem in the US and Australia, then show how election conspiracism can, does and may undermine democracy in both settings. I do so by enlisting a proceduralist conception of democracy and democratic legitimacy in order to assess its harms and to comprehend them in relation to the purpose and function of elections in representative democracies. A key theme is to understand why Australia has proved to be more resilient to disinformation about the authenticity of electoral processes and outcomes.
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© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.