Donald Trump stokes unfounded fears of voter fraud in “rigged election”

Donald Trump continues to insist that 3 million people voted illegally on Election Day. He still hasn’t cited any hard evidence for that, but he’s now invoking a source that offers no public proof.

On Friday, the president of the United States tweeted that “Gregg Phillips and crew” would soon be publishing their final results showing that illegal ballots had been cast en masse:

In the months since President Donald Trump won on Election Day, Trump has continued his unusual habit of questioning the legitimacy of his own election — claiming that he would have won the popular vote if “millions of people” hadn’t voted illegally, and now calling for an investigation into voter fraud, even though reputable studies have found voter fraud is nearly nonexistent in the US.

What’s the basis for all of this? A new report by Glenn Thrush for the New York Times suggests it might have started with a story from a “friend” that may or may not be true, which Trump retold to congressional leaders on Monday:

Over the past few years, many states took an opportunity — enabled by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling — to pass a series of restrictions on voting that critics argue disproportionately hurt minority voters.

But a series of court rulings last year put many of the new laws, or at least parts of them, on hold. From July through September, different courts across the country issued six rulings striking down some or all of six states’ new voting restrictions. The message was clear: These restrictions are oppressive, particularly for minority voters.

Donald Trump often threatens to sue people and doesn’t follow through. But apparently, allowing too many Latinos to vote is serious enough to justify an actual lawsuit.

Trump’s campaign sued the Clark County, Nevada registrar on Tuesday for allowing the polls to stay open on the last day of early voting (November 4) so that everyone in line could vote. The suit comes after Trump and the Nevada GOP chair both pointed to reports of a Mexican supermarket, where polls stayed open until 10 to accommodate 2-hour-long lines, as evidence that Democrats were deliberately keeping polls open to accommodate “a certain group.”

Voting is one of the most important acts of citizenship we perform, but that doesn’t mean it’s always a simple process. As Americans flood into their polling places today there are plenty of things that can stand between their best, most patriotic intentions and the ballot box.

During this campaign, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has claimed the election is somehow “rigged.” In fact, many of his supporters are answering his call to monitor polling places to ensure the election isn’t “stolen.” With all of this, it’s more important than ever for people to understand exactly what their rights are.

November 8 will mark the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Since many states have taken advantage of a Supreme Court ruling that invalidated parts of the old law, there are now many places across the country where casting a ballot will be much more difficult than it was in 2012.

This interactive map, created by the American Civil Liberties Union, shows the 15 states where lawmakers have passed — or attempted to pass — new policies to make voting tougher. These include things like creating new hoops to jump through in order to register, cuts to early voting, and stricter voter ID requirements.

Will nonwhite Americans be in danger when they head to the polls on Election Day?

Somehow, in the year 2016, this has become a question worth considering. In the days before the election, white supremacist groups and forums have started hatching and hyping plans to “monitor” polling places on Election Day for possible fraud — in ways that often tip over into voter intimidation, harassment, or even potential incitement to violence.

Donald Trump supporters have come up with a new way to try to suppress support for Hillary Clinton this November: posting fake advertisements on Twitter telling people to vote by text.

Theoretical physicist Robert McNees collected a few examples on Twitter, most coming from an account that is known for posting racist, sexist, and homophobic tweets:

There is little doubt at this point that voter ID laws are discriminatory. Many Republicans, who have pushed these laws in recent years, have admitted as much. Studies show the laws have a disproportionate impact on black and brown voters. And there is a very long history of voter suppression against black voters in the US. All of this adds up to what’s fairly described as a constitutional crisis depriving people of their most fundamental democratic right.

But there’s some good news: Despite Republican legislators’ best attempts to suppress minority voters, study after study has found that voter ID laws have little to no effect on voter turnout. At worst, the effect is small — barely detectable even in studies that employ multiple controls. At best, there’s no effect at all or even an increase.

One of Donald Trump’s most frequent talking points on the campaign trail is that the presidential election is somehow “rigged” in Hillary Clinton’s favor. Trump uses the term as shorthand for everything from media bias to voter fraud, and his supporters seem to have taken his claims to heart.

An Iowa woman was arrested and charged with voter fraud after casting two ballots for Trump. She told Iowa Public Radio that she was afraid her first ballot would be changed to a vote for Clinton.

The Democratic National Committee is accusing the Republican Party of coordinating to intimidate voters. And it’s taking the GOP to court.

The DNC filed a lawsuit against the Republican National Committee on Wednesday night, alleging that the GOP was violating a 34-year-old court order that bars the RNC from using “voter fraud” as an excuse to suppress votes.

On November 8, Americans will head to the polls. In addition to electing a president, voters will be deciding down-ballot races that could have a major impact on national politics for years to come.

Most notably, candidates for both House and Senate will be running in contested races throughout the country. Importantly, the outcome of these races will determine which party controls Congress during the next president’s first years in office. Throughout Barack Obama’s presidency, his leadership has been restricted by a Republican Congress; however, Democrats are threatening to regain control this year. If that were to happen, the political landscape of our country could shift significantly.

Donald Trump made headlines at last night’s debate by refusing to acknowledge the fundamental legitimacy of the American electoral system, threatening to pursue his complaints about a “rigged” political process up to Election Day and beyond. This has Republicans despondent about Trump’s performance and worried about their long-term consequences. Their plan, after Trump loses, is to try to pick up the pieces, block Democratic legislation, and beat Clinton in 2020 — not tear down the entire fabric of American democracy.

But Republicans pushing back on Trump’s rigged talk aren’t owning up to their role in laying the groundwork for this. Trump is simply taking seriously their own longstanding strategy on voter ID laws and other aspects of election procedure.

Donald Trump is preparing to argue that if he loses the presidential election on November 8, that’s only because it was “stolen” from him.

So if Trump does go down to defeat, Republican and conservative leaders across the country will immediately face a choice on November 9.

Donald Trump is very publicly freaking out about election fraud. He has tweeted multiple times about it, complaining that the election will be rigged against him — conveniently, as Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls continues to grow.

It’s really no mystery where all this bluster — with no evidence of actual voter fraud to back it up — came from: the Republican Party.

Donald Trump is insisting that there is wide-scale voter fraud in US election. It’s part of a barrage of tweets planting the seed that Americans elections are rigged:

But here’s the thing: Voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

This could end badly.

Every time Donald Trump starts slipping in the polls, he starts intimating to his followers that there’s a conspiracy to rig the election — and a win for Hillary Clinton will be proof that it worked.

If there was any remaining doubt that North Carolina’s voting restrictions — which require a photo ID to vote and limit early voting days — are about disenfranchising black people, recent comments by a top Republican consultant in the state should put that doubt to rest.

William Wan reported for the Washington Post:

Three months out, Donald Trump has already started warning people the election in November might be “rigged” for Hillary Clinton, telling Republican voters to “watch very closely.”

Speaking with Fox News’s Sean Hannity Monday, Trump insinuated President Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012 in fixed election, said his own primary win was rigged “a little bit,” that Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in a “rigged” primary, and that Democrats would attempt to rig the 2016 election for Clinton.