ICYMI: Top Strategists in Commonplace Magazine: “Calling Elections Rigged Is Bad Politics and Worse Civics”

With two weeks until Election Day, Cygnal pollster Alex Tarascio and veteran Republican strategist David Kochel, consultants for RightCount, published an op-ed in Commonplace Magazine, detailing why claims that elections are rigged actively depress voter turnout among the voters needed to win competitive races. Founded in 2020, American Compass, the magazine’s parent organization, has established itself as a consequential center of conservative thought. RightCount chose to release its data and make its case in Commonplace Magazine because the organization is dedicated to taking the mission of rebuilding election integrity to every corner of the conservative movement.

Drawing on RightCount’s latest national survey research, Tarascio and Kochel show that while base voters turn out regardless, rhetoric questioning election legitimacy demotivates softer conservatives, a group that represents roughly one in five voters on the Republican side. Crucially, the authors note that with voters prioritizing inflation and the cost of living (32%) over voting procedures (8%), candidates who focus on 2020 grievances are tuning out the voters who decide elections.

Calling Elections Rigged Is Bad Politics and Worse Civics

The bait that’s killing confidence in elections – and the party that keeps picking it up.

October 2026 | Alex Tarasco & David Kochel

“Nobody builds a business they expect to fail. Nobody gives money to a candidate they know will lose. People do give money when they believe their contribution could be decisive. The same logic applies to the ballot box. The rigged-election message gives people a reason to stay home that feels righteous rather than lazy.”

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“The voters Republicans most need this fall are the ones for whom ‘it’s rigged’ is not a call to arms but permission to stay home... about a third of Republicans (34%) say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who says 2020 was stolen. But that group was never in play. 99% of them also say they would vote for any generic Republican for Congress. These aren’t wobbly voters waiting to be won over, or looking for a push to get out to the polls... The other two-thirds of Republicans aren’t interested in candidates who talk about stolen elections... This is who Republicans are slipping with.”

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“In that same October survey, 9% of the overall electorate fit a profile we call Republican Fatalists, voters who pulled the lever for Trump or the GOP in 2024 but now expect Democrats to win Congress. They represent roughly one in five voters on the Republican side. Only 71% intend to vote for a Republican candidate for Congress, and only 49% say they are definitely voting Republican... The Republican pitch to bring them back has to make them feel like a trip to the polls might help lead to change. The rigged-election message does the opposite.”

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“Georgia’s Senate runoffs in January 2021 showed what this rhetoric produces better than any survey can. At the end of his first term, Trump spent weeks telling supporters that mail voting could not be trusted and the system was rigged. Senator David Perdue received about 250,000 fewer votes in the runoff than he had in November... Both Republicans lost and the Senate flipped. The evidence that rigged-election messaging increases turnout among persuadable voters does not exist. The evidence that it depresses turnout is accumulating.”

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“In September, 26% of likely voters named inflation and cost of living as their top priority. That figure climbed to 32% in October. In RightCount’s national poll, only 8% chose election integrity and voting reform... Every minute a candidate spends talking about voter rolls is a minute not spent on grocery prices. Voters are practically screaming that they want their government to focus on lowering prices.”

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“The candidate who tells voters what their state already does right and frames federal legislation as extending what works is running on election reform. That argument assumes the system can work, because most voters in most states believe their own system does. The candidate who calls the whole thing rigged is making a different argument. He is presenting the system as broken beyond the reach of the people he is asking to participate in it.”

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“American political institutions survived the stress tests of the last decade. The courts ruled. Congress certified. The transfers of power happened. The guardrails held. Most voters still believe that elections are legitimate and the final word on who governs. But a large and growing minority in each party no longer does. Political culture has proven far more fragile than institutions... Politicians who undermine that belief are making a strategic mistake and destroying the only source of legitimacy they have.”

Click here to read the full essay in Commonplace Magazine.

For media inquiries, interview requests with the authors, or access to the underlying Cygnal/RightCount survey research, please email cmaloney@blackrockgrp.com.