Since winning the 2024 election, president-elect Donald Trump has gone quiet on his false claims of voter fraud.
But the election denial movement he spawned isn't going away — and appears to be strengthening in some areas.
"The election denial movement has been evolving and shapeshifting in an effort to stay relevant," said Lizzie Ulmer, a senior vice-president at States United Action, a group that tracks candidates who attack the credibility of United States elections.
The movement's agenda focuses on many of the debunked claims of voter fraud that Trump and his allies advanced after his failed 2020 re-election bid.
Claire Zunk, a spokesperson for Trump and the Republican National Committee, said "common sense" election reforms are needed and Trump is "committed to keeping his promises and securing our elections nationwide".
The Nov 5 election delivered victory for scores of Republican candidates who publicly supported Trump's false claim that his loss to President Joe Biden four years ago was due to voter fraud.
Nationwide, a half-dozen candidates who denied the 2020 election results won state offices this year, and 143 won races for the US House and Senate, according to States United Action data.
Election deniers are also filling key roles in Trump's new administration.
Former Florida attorney-general Pam Bondi, a supporter of Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat, has been nominated as US attorney-general. Kash Patel, who promoted false election fraud claims after serving in Trump's first White House, was nominated on Saturday to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"People thought we were going to go away if Donald Trump won the election. They are wrong," said Mark Finchem, a Republican state legislator in Arizona who has been a national voice in claiming fraud is rampant in US elections.
After the 2020 election, Finchem helped launch the election-denial movement in Arizona, where he won a state senate seat this year.
At the national level, the Republican sweep of the White House and both chambers of Congress could pave the way for a law mandating proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
Most Democrats have opposed the bill, known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, saying it would disenfranchise eligible voters.
"It's certainly something we should prioritise," US Representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who chairs the House subcommittee responsible for election law, said, including a possible rollback of a ban preventing states from changing voter rolls in the 90 days before an election.
The Election Integrity Network, a group of activists organised by conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, will urge Congress and the Trump administration to overhaul federal election laws.
Election officials and independent voting-rights advocates said many of the changes pushed by Trump's allies are unnecessary and, in some cases, unconstitutional.
Restrictions on early voting and mail-in voting, for instance, would make it more difficult for legitimate voters to cast ballots, they said.
Trump's victory appears to have emboldened election sceptics in some battleground states that he won this year — such as Georgia.
In the lead up to the Nov 5 election, Georgia's elections board, dominated by three Trump supporters, proposed new rules to grant local officials the right not to vote for election certification and to require hand counting of votes.
Democrats said the changes could significantly delay election results and cause chaos. State courts blocked them, but the Republican Party has appealed.
Some Georgia Republicans want to enshrine those measures in state law.
"We'll be going to the legislature and asking them to address some of these issues" in the next session in January, said Josh McKoon, head of the Georgia Republican Party.
Such proposals are likely to face opposition from Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans who resisted pressure from Trump in the 2020 election "to find" him the votes that cost him Georgia.
McKoon said Georgia Republicans also want to increase funding to the state election board for investigations, which could result in the removal of local officials who they believe mismanage elections.
He singled out Fulton County, the state's most populous and a centre of Black political power, as a possible target.
Democrats and voting rights groups say the attacks on Fulton are a cover for efforts to suppress Black and Democratic votes.
* The writers are from Reuters