Experts are warning that Donald Trump will once again exploit likely delays in counting heavily Democratic- leaning absentee and mail-in ballots in November to push new conspiracy theories about election fraud to overcome a potential loss to Kamala Harris.
The vote totals could be even tighter this November in toss-up states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin than in 2020, when Trump and his allies filed ultimately unsuccessful legal challenges and assembled slates of fake electors to keep him in office despite his loss to Joe Biden. Experts worry that he’ll try it again, reported Axios.
“It is a near guarantee that Donald Trump will declare victory the night of Nov. 5 and the margin won’t matter,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
“It won’t matter whether he’s accurate and he actually won, or whether he was defeated soundly. I think we should absolutely expect that super-spreaders of disinformation will parrot the lies about the election in the immediate aftermath.”
Trump has refused to say whether he would accept an election loss as legitimate and has threatened to imprison anybody who engages in “unscrupulous” election behavior. He told law enforcement to “watch for voter fraud,” and Democrats worry that the 175,000 poll watchers and workers recruited by his campaign could be used to intimidate voters.
“Sowing doubt … is not enough to get the election overturned,” said election law expert Rick Hasen. “[But] it’s enough to create the conditions where people are more willing to do radical things to try to overturn the results, because they are more apt to believe that the election is being stolen.”
