Las Vegas
Donald Trump, who has spent recent days suggesting there is “large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day,” was asked during the final 2016 presidential debate if he will accept the results of the election.
“I will look at it at the time,” Trump said Wednesday night. “Millions of people that are registered to vote that shouldn’t be registered to vote.”
Debate moderator Chris Wallace then pressed Trump about whether he would accept the tradition of the “peaceful transition of power and that no matter how hard-fought a campaign is, that at the end of the campaign that the loser concedes to the winner. Not saying that you’re necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner and that the country comes together in part for the good of the country. Are you saying you’re not prepared now to commit to that principle?”
“What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time,” Trump replied. “I’ll keep you in suspense. Okay?”
Just how big of a loss would Trump have to suffer in order to convince him he didn’t lose the election because of voter fraud? That’s not at all clear—even to Trump’s top campaign aides and surrogates.
Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson said there was no chance that a 7-point loss could be attributed to voter fraud (Trump now trails Clinton by about 7 points in polls):
What about a five-point loss? “Well, it just depends on the county,” Pierson demurred, before suggesting that Trump was talking about potentially challenging the results of an extremely close election. “If it’s 500 votes, do you challenge it or not? That’s something that Mr. Trump is saying he’s going to wait to make that decision.”
But Ben Carson suggested there could be millions of fraudulent votes:
Trump campaign senior advisor A.J. Delgado was simply incredulous when I asked her what Trump meant by “large scale” voter fraud. “When has he talked about large scale voter fraud? Where’s that quote from?” she asked. “Did he say large scale voter fraud? Really?”
“I’m not saying it would be crazy or not,” she continued, as we both pulled out our phones to find the tweet.
“Hmm, let’s see. On the spot fact-checking,” she said, as she scrolled Twitter and I tried to get my frozen phone to work. “See, I’m looking at the tweets right now and I don’t see [it].”
When my phone finally unfroze and the veracity of Trump’s tweet was confirmed, Delgado said she simply didn’t know what Trump meant. “You’d have to ask him that, right? I don’t know what he meant by large scale voter fraud.”
What evidence is there that large scale voter fraud is going on right now, as Trump suggested? “I would hope there isn’t evidence of that happening right now,” Delgado replied, “because if there is it would be stopped, right?”
In a recent speech, Trump pointed to two recent elections where voter fraud could have potentially determined the outcome: Minnesota’s 2008 Senate race, where the margin of victory was about 0.01 percent, and the 2008 presidential election results in North Carolina, a state that Barack Obama carried by 0.32 percent. When elections are extremely close, there are often recounts and legal disputes. The American republic, of course, depends on following existing laws to determine the winner of extremely close elections.
Trump certainly has the right to reserve his legal options to ensure the integrity of the vote, but that doesn’t seem to be what he’s doing. With talk of “large scale voter fraud” and “millions” of wrongly registered voters, he seems to be laying the groundwork to challenge the legitimacy of a loss no matter how big or small.
