Then on Saturday morning a Trump spokeswoman detailed the campaign’s concerns.
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Nearly any plausible scenario for Trump includes the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a battleground state with 20 electoral votes, which has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992. “So I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the 8th, go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100 percent fine”.
“We’re gonna watch Pennsylvania”.
Beyond that, he’s started putting the responsibility for the election on his supporters – not only in their task of going out to vote but to make sure that voting is being tracked accurately.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if [Hillary Clinton’s] people had something to do with putting them on these evenings, ” Trump has said.
Of course, not all cases of electoral fraud lead to protest and a crisis of legitimacy, but research by Joshua Tucker of New York University and Andrew Little of Cornell University suggests that claims of voter fraud are a powerful tool for rallying protest. As Politifact reported, “some of the 59 divisions had fewer than 10 registered Republicans”.
State election officials are responsible for certifying election results for races that cross jurisdictions, such as gubernatorial and senatorial races.
“The law required in-person voters to show certain photo IDs, beginning in 2016, which African Americans disproportionately lacked, and eliminated or reduced registration and voting access tools that African Americans disproportionately used”, the decision that recently overturned North Carolina’s strict voter ID law explained. It was later struck down. Trump said during a rally in CT this weekend.
“The only way we can lose, in my opinion, I really mean this … is if cheating goes on”.
It’s not uncommon for campaigns to station volunteers outside of polling places.
It allows normal poll watching, like rallying supporters to vote, but not anything aimed at voter suppression, like posting armed guards at polling locations or questioning people in an intimidating way before they vote.
A spokeswoman for Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, another potential gubernatorial candidate who has endorsed Trump, said he would not comment on Trump’s “day-to-day activities”.
Trump is also pretty clearly talking about ensuring that “cheating” doesn’t happen in a city that is majority-minority – and which is home to an estimated 200,000 Muslims – with the help of his overwhelmingly white supporters and “law enforcement” throughout the rest of the state.
It’s also worth noting that Trump’s rhetoric about voter fraud in Pennsylvania – an issue the candidate claims to have “studied” – is plainly at odds with the facts. “He is seeking to exploit the historical fault lines that cause many blacks to view police as enforcers of systemic racism”. After all, he very much believes in the concept of America First.
According to a 2014 investigation by Justin Levitt, a professor at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, there were just 31 cases of voter fraud nationwide between 2000 and 2014, with over 1 billion votes cast during that time.
Trump’s comments further divide a state that is already terribly divided. He wants attention. He is an very bad candidate, but, I think he is having too much to ever let this go.
All this, because a man can’t admit that he might lose fair and square.
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While Ohio has tipped back and forth in recent decades, a Republican presidential nominee has not carried Wisconsin since 1984, and Pennsylvania or MI since 1988. Trump’s shot at success?
