November 06, 2020

Trump declares election a fraud, risking democracy

topic:	Election
located:	USA
editor:	Yair Oded

As Democrat Joe Biden inches closer to securing the presidency, President Trump is ratcheting up his attack on the electoral process, calling the election a fraud and baselessly claiming that a Democratic and media-led conspiracy to overthrow him is to be blamed for his potential loss. 

At a press conference from the White House earlier this week, Trump effectively indicated that he refuses to concede should he lose and stated that he will seek intervention from the courts. In doing so, the President does not only risk subverting the election’s results, but also eroding the trust of millions of Americans in the election process, thus undermining the future of American democracy. 

Trump’s attack on the electoral process began months ago when he railed against Democrats’ attempts to get people to vote by mail due to the spread of COVID-19. With no evidence to back up his assertions, Trump portrayed mail-in ballots as intrinsically susceptible to fraud and mismanagement, and warned that a loss by him would inevitably mean that the election was stolen from him. 

The president’s campaign of misinformation is geared at portraying himself as the rightful winner of the race, regardless of the facts on the ground, and sowing confusion and distrust among his supporters. On Wednesday, for instance, the president prematurely declared victory in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina, tweeting, “We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a Big Trump lead.” By the time Twitter labeled this tweet as misleading, millions of Trump supporters had already been exposed to it. The damage, for all intents and purposes, had been done.

Now that Biden is gaining advantage over him in several key states, and is just within reach of the 270 electoral votes he needs in order to win the presidency, Trump is openly declaring the results in states where he is poised to lose as fraudulent. “If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” he said at the White House earlier this week, “If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.” “We were winning in all the key locations, by a lot actually” he went on, “and then our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret.” 

The president’s allegations are being parroted by his campaign, closest family members, and some right-wing media figures – all hammering in the message that the election is being stolen from Trump. In a Thursday tweet, the president’s son, Donald, Jr., urged his father "to go to total war over this election." On the same day, Georgia state Rep. and top Trump campaign surrogate Vernon Jones stated at a rally, as he was standing by the president’s son, “we’re starting now to see the white in their eyes and we’re getting ready to start shooting.”

This dangerous rhetoric is already having repercussions on the ground, with Trump supporters, enraged over the alleged Democratic illegal coup, staging protests from Michigan to Arizona. 

Currently, many Republican leaders remain hesitant to come out in support of Trump’s allegations, but that could change should they feel that a significant enough portion of the public in their districts supports the narrative promulgated by Trump. As was evident in the president’s impeachment trial and the recent battle over the Supreme Court nomination, many key Republicans consider remaining in power and securing political victories more crucial than guaranteeing justice and healing divisions in the nation. 

Trump has already filed a series of lawsuits seeking to delegitimise the elections in states where he has lost or is bound to be defeated. Primarily, the president is looking to get the courts to disqualify the mail-in ballots that granted Biden his edge in several key states. But as perilous as Trump’s court bid is, and as fateful as it could prove in subverting the election results, it is his attempt to get millions of his supporters to view the entire electoral process as rigged and illegitimate that could pose the greatest threat to democracy in the long run and further tear at the already tattered fabric of American society.  

Image by StockSnap 

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