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Analysis: 13 ways Democrats will steal the election (according to Trump)

By Glenn Kessler Washington Post

“It’s the only thing they do well, they cheat. Their policies are no good. Their government is no good. Their management is no good, but they cheat like nobody can cheat.”

- Former president Donald Trump, remarks about Democrats in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Sept. 21

Trump has been laying the groundwork for challenging the outcome of the presidential election again if he loses again. He regularly warns audiences that Democrats will cheat their way to victory. He repeats claims about the 2020 election that have been debunked. He demeans Democrats as incompetent and ineffective, and yet at the same time suggests they are capable of pulling off a vast election conspiracy of switched votes, stolen ballots, coups and fraud. He never says he will accept the outcome of the election if victory eludes him.

Here’s an assessment of the claims made by Trump and his allies - some repurposed from those he made in 2020, and some newly conjured for 2024. Be alert for projection, a hallmark of Trump claims: He likes to accuse others of what he himself has done or would try.

Migrant noncitizens will vote in droves

What Trump says. Trump raises this claim in almost every venue. “A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote,” Trump said in his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. “And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.” He frames the border surge during Joe Biden’s presidency as a diabolical plot to swing the election. “They can’t even speak English, they don’t even know what country they’re in practically, and these people are trying to get them to vote,” he said in the debate. Trump’s claims have been echoed repeatedly by Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the X social media platform, who has posted on this issue dozens of times and who himself is an immigrant who worked in the country illegally before he became a citizen. Many Republican lawmakers, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), have also made these claims.

The facts. Federal law bans noncitizens from voting in federal elections, including races for president, vice president, Senate or House of Representatives. Under a law adopted in 1996, noncitizens who vote can face a fine or a prison term as long as a year, or both - not to mention deportation. A majority of states - 36 - request or require voters to show identification when they vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Increasingly, states also are seeking ways to require proof of citizenship to vote or are considering ways to update voter lists to eliminate any noncitizens. There is scattered evidence of noncitizens voting in federal elections - sometimes by mistake (such as erroneously thinking they were eligible while getting a driver’s license), but also knowingly. These cases are an infinitesimal percentage of total votes cast.

Cheat sheet. Trump originally started making claims about noncitizen voting to explain why he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016. An election fraud commission he established was never able to prove his claims. Noncitizens come to the United States seeking a better life and would be risking a lot - such as deportation - to cast a ballot even if they managed to evade any identification requirements. Moreover, there is no evidence of any concerted effort by Democrats to enlist noncitizens who arrived in recent years in such an illegal scheme. But Trump may find an ally in the courts. The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, on Wednesday allowed Virginia to remove 1,600 voters from the state’s registration rolls because their driver’s license applications indicated or suggested that they were not U.S. citizens. The Justice Department had sought to block the purge, saying officials were removing eligible voters who were wrongly identified as noncitizens.

Polling places will have lax rules

What Trump says. Since Trump lost the 2020 election, he has repeatedly claimed that votes in that election were illegally counted. For instance, he said that 43,000 absentee ballot votes were counted in DeKalb County, Georgia, that violated chain-of-custody rules and that boxes of ballots in Fulton County mysteriously appeared from under a table and were added to Biden’s tally. In Philadelphia and Detroit, he claimed, there were more votes counted than registered voters. Often, as in these examples, Trump pins the blame on municipalities that have largely Black leadership or majority-Black populations. Trump has begun to make similar claims about the 2024 election, where early and absentee voting have been underway in many states for weeks. “They’ve already started cheating in Lancaster,” he said in a speech in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday. “We caught them with 2,600 fake votes.”

The facts. All of the 2020 claims have been proved false. Trump has never been able to document a single case of invalid votes being counted. And in the case of Pennsylvania, Trump was referring to suspicious voter registration forms - which were never processed because they were snared in one of the many nets that protect against election fraud.

Cheat sheet. In close elections involving recounts, ballots are closely scrutinized by both sides. It would take a vast conspiracy to count phantom votes.

Media coverage will favor Democrats

What Trump says. Trump and many Republicans constantly berate mainstream media organizations for covering Republicans with bias and “fake” stories, thus tilting the electorate against them. Trump calls this election interference. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has claimed that Trump lost “millions of votes” in 2020 because coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop was suppressed.

The facts. In today’s partisan environment, this complaint has less resonance. A flourishing right-wing media ecosystem of long standing includes Fox News, Newsmax, the X social media platform, talk radio, and online publications such as the Federalist, the Washington Free Beacon and Gateway Pundit. They report critically on Democrats and celebrate Republicans; Trump conducts virtually all his interviews within these friendly environs. It is possible now for any Trump supporter to tune out information from mainstream media - which continues to report critically on both Democrats and Republicans. So while news organizations might continue to pursue stories about Trump’s closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin, right-wing media will ignore or dismiss such reporting. As for Hunter Biden’s laptop, Twitter only briefly blocked users from sharing a New York Post story on the laptop. Vance’s claim of millions of votes being swayed is ludicrous. A poll cited by conservatives used highly misleading questions, but even it showed that for all but a tiny percentage of Biden voters, the story would not have made a difference - even if framed as a still-unproven scandal.

Cheat sheet. Media bias can be in the eye of the beholder. Trump labels any critical reporting on him as “fake.” Whether such reporting affects voting patterns has not been documented, but fact-based reporting does not amount to an effort to steal the election. Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, said he killed a planned editorial-page endorsement of Harris because such endorsements “create a perception of bias” and “a perception of non-independence.”

Prosecutions are election interference

What Trump says. Trump has repeatedly decried the criminal cases against him, brought by federal prosecutors, a Georgia prosecutor and the Manhattan district attorney, as attempts to interfere in the election by Biden. Trump was convicted of business fraud in the Manhattan case - the so-called hush money trial - and is due to be sentenced after the election. Trump argued that a gag order placed on him during the trial - because of his attacks on the case and potential witnesses - was especially egregious. “I have a judge who put a gag order on me,” he said. “So, when you ask me a question or when you ask me a question, I can’t give you an answer because if I give the answer, they want to put you in jail,” which would keep him off the campaign trail.

The facts. There is no evidence that Biden had a role in bringing any of these criminal cases. The federal cases were brought by an independent prosecutor, and Biden was not involved in the local cases. One of the federal cases, involving Trump’s retention of classified documents, was dismissed by a judge he nominated to the court; the dismissal has been appealed by the prosecutor. The prosecutor in the other federal case, concerning Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, recently filed a detailed brief that revealed new information about Trump’s actions on that day. Trump has criticized the filing as additional election interference, but the proceedings were significantly delayed because Trump claimed immunity for his actions. That led to a Supreme Court ruling stating that a president could not be prosecuted for official acts - which required the prosecutor to file a new indictment and then explain how he was abiding by the Supreme Court guidance. “THEY DISOBEYED THEIR OWN RULE IN FAVOR OF COMPLETE AND TOTAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE. I DID NOTHING WRONG, THEY DID!” Trump posted on social media as the new “DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE” filing fell within 60 days of the election. The Georgia case, which alleges Trump interfered in the 2020 election, is on indefinite hold as an appeals court determines whether the prosecutor must step aside because of allegations of misconduct presented by Trump’s lawyers.

Cheat sheet. Trump arguably triumphed in the Republican primaries because the indictments consolidated support for him as he portrayed himself as a victim of a corrupt process. Democrats have correctly labeled Trump a felon because of his criminal conviction in the Manhattan case, but there is little indication this has harmed Trump’s standing with Republicans. Through legal maneuvers, the former president has successfully delayed three of the cases until after the election.

‘Americans’ abroad will cast illegal votes

What Trump says. In a social media post in September, Trump claimed, “The Democrats are talking about how they’re working so hard to get millions of votes from Americans living overseas. Actually, they are getting ready to CHEAT! They are going to use UOCAVA [Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act] to get ballots, a program that emails ballots overseas without any citizenship check or verification of identity, whatsoever.” In lawsuits filed in Michigan and North Carolina state courts, and a separate action in Pennsylvania, Republicans have argued that U.S. citizens living abroad are improperly being allowed to vote or are being exempted from verification requirements. Michigan and North Carolina allow people born overseas to parents who were previously legal residents to cast ballots, too. Unlike many states, Pennsylvania does not require overseas voters to provide identification such as a driver’s license or passport. All three lawsuits have been dismissed by federal judges.

The facts. Democrats say they have a robust effort to harness the votes of Americans living overseas, a largely untapped source of votes. The Federal Voting Assistance Program, which helps with election logistics overseas, estimates that only 7.8 percent of the 2.9 million eligible overseas civilian citizens cast a ballot in 2020. The countries with the most overseas voters are Canada, Britain, Israel, France and Australia. Until 2016, most overseas voters were in the U.S. military, which leans Republican; in 2020, 57.4 percent of overseas ballots counted were cast by U.S. civilians, in contrast to members of the military accounting for 42.3 percent of the ballots, according to the Election Assistance Commission’s 2020 voting survey. The report said nearly 890,000 overseas votes were counted in the 2020 election, a 35 percent increase over 2016. The law allowing overseas voting permits citizens to register to vote and request an absentee ballot at the same time. Contrary to Trump’s claim, the law allowing overseas voting has robust registration requirements, though the method of verifying an overseas voter’s identity and eligibility varies from state to state. There is no history of fraud in the program, and overseas ballots are closely examined by election officials.

Cheat sheet. A conspiracy to steal an election with bogus overseas ballots is not credible, though it’s possible the outcome of the election could be determined by overseas ballots. According to EAC, 18,435 overseas absentee ballots were counted in Arizona, and 18,475 in Georgia; Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes and Georgia by 11,779 votes. George W. Bush won the 2000 election by beating Al Gore by 537 votes in Florida - where 2,490 overseas ballots were counted. A New York Times analysis determined that 680 of the overseas ballots failed to comply with state laws but, after pressure from the Bush campaign, most were accepted by election officials in counties carried by Bush.

Democrats will harvest ballots

What Trump says. Trump has decried “ballot harvesting” - a pejorative term for voters allowing someone else to deliver their absentee ballot to a polling location or a drop box. He’s even claimed he would win California, which he lost by 5 million votes in 2020, if not for ballot harvesting. Paradoxically, he also suggests that Republicans should get more organized and engage in the practice themselves.

The facts. Many states - 35 - allow someone to return a completed ballot on behalf of another voter, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But many limit this provision to a family member, household member or caregiver. Only 17 states allow a voter to designate someone else to return their ballot for them. Eleven states limit how many ballots an authorized person can return. Among the seven swing states that will most likely decide the winner in the electoral college, only Nevada allows a person designated by the voter to deliver the ballot (within three days of receipt). The Reno Gazette Journal in 2022 reported on a group, which backed a Republican candidate, posting fliers offering to collect people’s ballots. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania say that only the voter may return the ballot; North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona have rules that generally allow only a family member or member of the household to deliver the ballot. (In 2020, during the pandemic, Madison, Wisconsin, allowed more than 17,000 voters to drop off absentee ballots at stations set up in Madison’s 206 city parks, what was called “Democracy in the Park.” Republicans said they violated the state’s ban on harvesting.) North Carolina tightened its laws after a Republican operative in 2018 used ballot harvesting to swing the election in a congressional district. Participants in the scheme collected hundreds of absentee ballots from voters by offering to mail them. In some cases, workers collected blank or incomplete ballots, forged signatures on them and filled in votes.

Cheat sheet. There are a handful of election scenarios under which the electoral college winner would depend on who won Nevada. The GOP ballot harvesting scheme in North Carolina shows that the practice could swing a close election. But there has been no indication anything similar has taken place in Nevada since the practice was authorized in 2020.

GOP poll watchers will be obstructed

What Trump says. After losing the 2020 election, Trump claimed that mail-in and absentee ballots were processed illegally and in secret without Republican observers in place in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and other states. The Republican National Committee in this election has claimed it will have a robust “Protect the Vote” operation in place to recruit poll watchers, poll workers and lawyers to “ensure it is easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

The facts. Election observers are individuals who monitor voting locations and ballot counting sites. All of Trump’s 2020 claims were dismissed by judges as failing to demonstrate serious fraud. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, for instance, ruled against Trump in a 5-2 decision, finding that local election officials legally exercised their power in setting up a waist-high barrier and buffer zone of 15 to 18 feet between the campaign observers and the election workers inside the Philadelphia Convention Center. The state Supreme Court opinion stated that these conditions “allowed candidate representatives to observe the Board conducting its activities as prescribed under the Election Code.” Since 2020, some swing states, such as North Carolina and Georgia, have adopted new laws that allow poll watchers increased access to polling places and/or ballot counting centers.

Cheat sheet. Trump invented a nonissue and now Republicans are determined to makes sure the problem - such as it was - will never happen again. Increased scrutiny by poll watchers might catch suspicious activity but, without proper training or understanding of election procedures, poll watchers might also slow the count by raising unfounded objections.

Voting machines will be rigged and hacked

What Trump says. After losing the 2020 election, Trump often made bogus claims about Dominion Voting Systems, a U.S. company that makes software that local governments around the nation use to help run their elections. Without evidence, but apparently based on a stew of misinformation derived mostly from internet rumors and right-wing blogs, Trump claimed that Dominion machines deleted or switched votes that had been cast for him. In the 2024 election, Trump has called for “paper ballots - no machines that go up to space and whatever happens.” Some Republicans have continued to claim that Voting Systems machines somehow can be manipulated via the internet.

The facts. Such claims were repeatedly discredited by hand counts of ballots that confirmed the machine counts. Dominion operated in 28 states, including Florida and Ohio, two states that Trump easily won. But the contracts are often with individual counties. For instance, Dominion software was used in only two of the five counties that had problems in Michigan and Georgia - and the problems in Michigan were due to human error, according to a detailed account posted by the Michigan secretary of state’s office. The machine count was later confirmed by a hand count. Fox News in 2023 settled a lawsuit brought by Dominion for $787 million for spreading the lies about the machines. Fox acknowledged a court ruling finding “certain claims about Dominion to be false.” A Georgia judge last month rejected a lawsuit by Republican Party officials alleging that Dominion machines were not in compliance with Georgia law - a claim rejected by the Georgia secretary of state, a Republican. Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee wrote that the equipment was certified and any potential security risks “are - at this point - purely hypothetical.”

Cheat sheet. This is a particularly outlandish claim that for some reason continues to have resonance for the Republican Party. But there continues to be no evidence that the machines could be manipulated to change votes.

Private money will favor Democratic voters

What Trump says. Republicans have complained vociferously about “Zuckerbucks” - $350 million in grants given in 2020 to nearly 2,500 election departments by a nonprofit funded by Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg called the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). “Zuckerbucks, he put hundreds of millions of dollars into these nonprofits,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) when he was campaigning in the GOP primaries early this year. “And what they would do is they’d go to election offices, like the places that administer the elections, they’d flood it with money, here’s money, and then they’d bring in their people and they’d basically run the election in a way to benefit Democrats.” In a recent coffee-table book, Trump wrote of Zuckerberg’s “plotting to install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT” - a reference to the grant money - and said Zuckerberg “will spend the rest of his life in prison” if he illegally interferes in the 2024 election.

The facts. An analysis by a right-leaning group claimed that CTCL “consistently gave bigger grants and more money per capita to counties that voted for Biden.” But the there is no evidence of a deliberate scheme to promote Democrats in tight races; the largest grant, more than $19 million, went to New York City, one of the bluest areas in the United States. Election offices are chronically underfunded, and the grants were intended to assist election administrators during the pandemic. Zuckerberg is not funding such endeavors this election cycle. Since 2020, 28 states have adopted laws to prohibit, limit or regulate the use of private or philanthropic funding to run elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, including the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Cheat sheet. Zuckerberg is sitting this election out, and only two swing states (Michigan and Nevada) can accept private funding for elections.

Dead people will vote

What Trump says. One of Trump’s persistent complaints about the 2020 election is that ineligible voters were still on the voting rolls. “Over 8,000 ballots in Pennsylvania were cast by people whose names and dates of birth match individuals who died in 2020 and prior to the election,” he told a crowd on Jan. 6, 2021. “Think of that. Dead people, lots of dead people, thousands. And some dead people actually requested an application. That bothers me even more. Not only are they voting, they want an application to vote.” Republicans consistently have pressed for aggressive efforts to purge inactive voters - efforts that Democrats claim often are targeted at people of color.

The facts. Trump’s claims were false. The only documented case of a dead person voting in Pennsylvania in 2020 was a Republican who was charged with registering his dead mother and submitting a mail ballot in her name, along with registering his dead mother-in-law. (He pleaded guilty, saying, “I listened to too much propaganda and made a stupid mistake.”) Right-leaning organizations, such as the Citizen Outreach Foundation, have launched aggressive efforts to purge voters, such as 38,000 voters from Nevada, many located in Democratic strongholds in Las Vegas and Reno, claiming improper residency. Ironically, since 2020, nine states where Republican officials administer elections have quit the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), an interstate data exchange that identifies voters who have moved to a different state than the one they were registered in. Trump falsely claimed that ERIC “pumps the rolls” for Democrats, but previously officials in these states had praised ERIC for helping keep voting rolls up to date.

Cheat sheet. Despite GOP angst about inadequate oversight of voting rolls, little evidence has emerged that many people are voting simultaneously in multiple states or that dead people have cast ballots.

The weather will be used against Trump

What Trump says. The Trump campaign has expressed concern that victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina would not be able to vote. Trump barely won the state in 2020 - and he won about 62 percent of the vote in the 25 counties declared to be a disaster area after Helene. In effect, a candidate who has long sought to restrict mail balloting and early voting has flipped his stance. Trump has also sought to motivate his supporters in North Carolina by falsely claiming that the Biden-Harris administration was not helping people in red areas and was out of Federal Emergency Management Agency emergency funding because it had been directed to undocumented immigrants.

The facts. Trump co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita issued a statement calling for 10 measures to make it easier for citizens in affected areas to vote. Many of the proposals were contained in emergency legislation approved unanimously by North Carolina lawmakers that permitted the counties to modify voting hours, combine precincts, change voting sites and ease the return of absentee ballots.

Cheat sheet. Democrats don’t control the weather and have supported efforts to ease voting for people affected by hurricanes. But the impact will not be known until after the election. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that turnout declined nearly 7 percent in Florida’s panhandle after Hurricane Michael struck the region in early October 2018.

The Fed’s rate cut is election interference

What Trump says. After the Federal Reserve on Sept. 18 cut a key interest rate by a half-percentage point, Trump said it showed that the economy was either “very bad” or “they’re playing politics.” He said, “It was too big a cut and everyone knows that was a political maneuver that they tried to do before the election.”

The facts. The Fed is an independent agency - though Trump has suggested he would seek greater control over it if he became president again - and there is no evidence the Fed was motivated by politics. “This decision reflects our growing confidence that, with an appropriate recalibration of our policy stance, strength in the labor market can be maintained in a context of moderate economic growth and inflation moving sustainably down to 2 percent,” Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell told reporters. He said he did not see a likelihood of a recession. Powell was originally appointed by Trump.

Cheat sheet. The Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy, will not meet again until Nov. 6 to 7, so there is little likelihood of another rate cut before the election on Nov. 5. While the Fed’s action was a good sign for the economy, contrary to Trump’s statement, it often takes many months for Americans to absorb good economic news. The Fed’s action probably came too late in the election cycle to make much of an impact.

The Democratic nomination was a coup

What Trump says. Trump has described Biden’s decision to withdraw from the election and his replacement by Vice President Kamala Harris as “the first coup in the history of America.” He noted in a rally speech that Biden “got 14 million votes” in the Democratic primaries. “He got 14, think of it. He got 14, she got none.”

The facts. A coup is defined as a sudden, violent overthrow of a government. Biden’s decision to leave the race in July, four months before the election and after the primaries, was unusual, but President Lyndon B. Johnson withdrew from the race on March 31, 1968, after the primary season had started. However, Harris was always Biden’s running mate - and the Democratic National Convention had not yet convened and selected a nominee. For much of the nation’s history - though not recently - the selection of the nominee was not certain until the party convention was held.

Cheat sheet: Harris is the Democratic nominee and there is nothing Trump can do about that.