There is no charitable way to spin US President Donald Trump’s reckless claim that millions of undocumented voters cost him the popular vote in the 2016 election. Either he’s delusional or he’s the sorest winner in American history.
Trump won the Electoral College with 304 votes; Hillary Clinton won 2,864,974 more popular votes than he did. The only evidence of election rigging has pointed to Russians, who, according to US intelligence, hacked Democrats’ e-mails to help Trump get elected.
Yet since late November, Trump has been chipping away at the integrity of the nation’s electoral system by insisting he would have won both if, as he tweeted then, “you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally” in blue states such as California.
There is no evidence of any such large-scale voter fraud. Trump’s own legal team said as much during post-election recounts. Trump produced zero proof when he was asked to put up or shut up by California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, among others. He has been contradicted by leading Republicans from Sen. Lindsey Graham to House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Yet he repeated the false claim again on Monday, telling congressional leaders that Clinton had benefited from as many as 5mn undocumented votes. When Democrats protested, the president reportedly repeated an anecdote from a German golf pro whose friend had once been turned away from the polls while Latinos got provisional ballots. On Tuesday, Trump’s increasingly compromised press secretary, Sean Spicer, cited studies that he said would back up Trump’s “longstanding belief” in massive voter fraud, but did not.
On Wednesday, Trump called for “a major investigation into voter fraud, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time).” Actually, multiple registration isn’t illegal, only multiple voting. But news organisations soon produced public records showing Trump’s daughter Tiffany, chief strategist Steve Bannon and Treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin all fell into Trump’s multiple registration dragnet.
This is ceasing to be amusing. Trump’s investigation, like his border wall and draconian refugee ban, is policy by prejudice, gossip and “alternative fact.”
“If President Trump has evidence of voter fraud at the scale he’s alleging, he should please bring it forward,” Padilla said. But so far the only fraud seems to be coming from the Oval Office. In less than a week, Trump has gone from small lies about his inaugural crowd to big ones like this, which could cost taxpayers, pave the way for voter suppression and harm innocents.
Federal investigations of voter fraud are rare. A five-year probe initiated by Republican President George W Bush’s administration turned up no evidence of voter fraud and ended in resignations and more investigations for the Department of Justice which enforces federal voting rights laws.
“Republicans have used claims of widespread voter fraud to discriminate and restrict access to the ballot box for years,” said Democratic US Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina.
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