Trump is already poisoning trust in yet another US election

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

(CNN) — If God was the vote counter, Donald Trump says he’d win in a landslide.

The Republican nominee suggested on Thursday that divine intervention in next week’s election would reveal him as the rightful winner of even Democratic bastions like California.

On one level, Trump’s comment shows how his false election fraud claims have entered the outer realms of absurdity.

But this goes beyond hyperbole. Trump — who altered reality for tens of millions of Americans by claiming he was cheated out of power four years ago — is creating a sinister threat to the 2024 election and spinning a legacy of fractured trust that could taint presidential votes long after he’s left the stage. The election fraud claims that Trump most notably supercharged in 2020 to salve his humiliation at losing to Joe Biden are already at high intensity this year.

After laying out the darkest closing argument in modern American history, Trump is now increasingly turning to poisoning public confidence in the election. In New Mexico on Thursday, he falsely claimed the state was actually in his column in 2016 and 2020. “I believe we won it twice,” he said. “If we could bring God down from heaven and he’d be the vote counter, we’d win this, we’d win California, we’d win a lot of states. … You have just got to keep the votes honest.”

In reality, Trump lost New Mexico twice, by 8 and 11 points, and his claims he could win Democratic strongholds like California but for vote fraud are wildly off base. But they are part of a clear and deliberate strategy that is unfolding before the eyes of millions of voters to create an impression that Tuesday’s election will be fraudulent. This might seed ground for legal challenges if Trump loses, and it also serves to crank up fury among his supporters already primed by past false fraud claims. Trump is also working in conjunction with the conservative media machine to create an impression that his victory is a certainty and that a win for Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats can only be the result of fraud.

The ex-president’s increasing efforts to shatter the credibility of the 2024 election, as an apparent Plan B if he loses, coincide with a widening effort by GOP officials and “Make America Great Again” activists to position to undermine any Harris victory in courts, local election jurisdictions and even in state legislatures.

Comprehensive recent reporting by CNN has detailed these schemes.

• For instance, an investigation published on Thursday showed that some of the same activists who tried to overturn Biden’s victory in 2020 are building a step-by-step plan to undermine the results if Trump falls short again.
• Trump and Republican National Committee officials have increasingly floated claims about potential issues with mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.
• House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, said that “it makes a lot of sense” to allocate North Carolina’s electoral voters before votes are tallied because of the risk that the aftermath of Hurricane Helene could make it hard for some voters to cast ballots. The congressman later said the comment was taken out of context, but it revived fears that some GOP state legislatures — acting on hyped-up claims of fraud or other reasoning — could ignore the will of voters and award election victories to Trump.
• Republicans have also made extensive efforts, including in the House of Representatives, to highlight what experts say is the almost non-existent problem of voting by non-citizens.
• In one case this week, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin pushed an 11th-hour effort to remove 1,600 suspected non-citizens from the rolls despite concerns the move will sweep up and disenfranchise some American citizens. A divided US Supreme Court allowed it.
• CNN reported Thursday that a misinformation microphone wielded by X owner and Trump supporter Elon Musk has become impossible for election officials in key battleground states to counter.

This catalogue of challenges to the fairness of the 2024 election, taken together with Trump’s increasing, bellicose claims of corruption, is creating a surreal new reality, given that the United States is the world’s most important democracy and has long been regarded by outsiders as the gold standard of self-governance.

A former and possibly future president who trashes elections as a tool of power

There is nothing unusual about extensive litigation in election season by both parties, which maintain armies of lawyers to challenge voting arrangements, counting practices and even results every election cycle. The 2000 election between then-Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush caused weeks of bitter legal fights over the close result in Florida, which was eventually resolved in the 43rd president’s favor by the US Supreme Court. Gore conceded that election, thereby guaranteeing an uncontested transfer of presidential power — a step Trump refused to take four years ago.

Declining to accept the result of elections has not exclusively been a Republican transgression. Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, for instance, refused to concede her race against Republican Brian Kemp in 2018, citing voter suppression allegations, though the Democrat did accept her rival was elected.

But it is new to have a major presidential candidate slamming the fairness and legality of successive elections ahead of time and warning they will only accept results based on their arbitrary and often evidence-free evaluations of fairness.

Trump’s intentions shone through a Truth Social post on Thursday in which he seized on incidents in Pennsylvania to claim that the results in the crucial swing state are fraudulent. The cases concern a potential irregularity in Lancaster County involving around 2,500 voter registration forms. In York County, election officials have declined more than 700 “questionable” voter registration applications and referred them to the district attorney’s office for investigation, CNN’s Danny Freeman reported on Thursday.

Investigations are still pending and it’s possible fraud could be unearthed. But Trump is already off and running without waiting for the facts. “We caught them CHEATING BIG in Pennsylvania. Must announce and PROSECUTE, NOW! This is a CRIMINAL VIOLATION OF THE LAW. STOP VOTER FRAUD!” Trump wrote. “WE ARE ON THEM ALL THIS TIME! Who would have ever thought that our Country is so CORRUPT?”

Incidents in Pennsylvania show how the vortex of conspiracy theories created by Trump about US elections become self-fulfilling.

The alleged violations were discovered, which ought to underline how secure American voting really is. But instead, every new glitch becomes grist for yet another false claim.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday that Trump’s claims of cheating in the commonwealth were “more of the same” from the ex-president. “Donald Trump wants to, again, use the same playbook, where he tries to create chaos and stoke division and fear, about our system. But again, we will have a free and fair, safe and secure election, in Pennsylvania, and the will of the people will be respected and protected.”

A dark new election tradition with a potentially devastating legacy

Trump’s assaults on the probity of American elections have made clear that a cycle of pre-election attempts to crush public confidence in the results has become as much of a presidential election tradition as primary season, the conventions and the historic moment when TV networks call the eventual winner.

The ex-president’s attempts to instill doubt in the system could also have a long-lasting legacy. Many polls show declining trust in the election system — and a new survey from CNN this week showed Trump’s antics have left the electorate jaundiced about his likely conduct next week. Just 30% of registered voters think Trump would accept the results of the election and concede if he loses, while 73% say that Harris would accept an election loss.

However, even if Americans may have concerns about their votes being counted, it’s not stopping them from casting ballots. More than 60 million Americans have already voted ahead of Tuesday’s election. And for all the tumult caused by Trump’s refusal to admit defeat and attempts to steal power after the 2020 election, the system did, eventually, ensure that the rightful winner of the presidency ended up in the Oval Office. The ex-president’s persistent and baseless claims of widespread fraud were thrown out by multiple courts at all levels including the Supreme Court.

Yet the longevity of a democracy rests on retaining the trust of the people. And if one of the candidates in a presidential election won’t accept that principle, the essential bargain between the governed and those who govern, which lies at the heart of the republic, is at risk.

For all America’s deep cultural and ideological divides, there was always a sense that elections could provide at least a temporary resolution to national disputes. That mythical trust in democracy was partially fractured in 2020 simply because Trump refused to admit defeat and then laid the foundation of his subsequent presidential campaign on the false premise that he won.

Gabriel Sterling, the Republican chief operating officer for Georgia’ secretary of state office, became a hero of democracy in 2020 with his clear denunciations of false fraud claims by the Trump campaign in his state. He is already warning that Americans need to recommit to bedrock values before next week’s election.

“We have had a history of over 200 years of the person who comes up short shaking the hand of the person who won and moving on,” Sterling told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday.

One side, in perhaps the most fraught and portentous election in modern US history, will face this painful choice whenever this year’s result becomes clear. Trump has already signaled he’s unlikely to admit defeat whatever happens. And Harris, if she loses, will face the prospect of conceding to a rival she has called a fascist.

But such dilemmas represent the essence of democracy.

“We are going to have the most secure election in American history across the country, Georgia included,” Sterling said.

“We have to learn to accept outcomes.”

The-CNN-Wire
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