How to improve writing (no. 106)

I was going to quote a sentence from The New York Times this morning until I realized how awful it was:

The Republicans who blocked Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from becoming speaker on Tuesday include some of the most hard-right lawmakers in the House; most denied the 2020 election, are members of the Freedom Caucus, or both.

The lack of parallelism in the sentence almost — almost — passes by unnoticed. But once you notice it, it’s, uh, noticeable: there’s no pair of elements for both to tie together. Here’s a simpler sentence to illustrate the problem, about members of an imaginary musical group:

Most studied piano, are guitarists, or both.

A possible revision:

Most are proponents of the “Big Lie” or members of the Freedom Caucus or both.

Elaine thinks that including numbers would help:

Nineteen of the twenty are members of the Freedom Caucus. Twelve are election deniers. Eleven are both.

Both revisions improve on the original.

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[In news coverage, the Times typically uses quotation marks with Big Lie. This post is no. 106 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]