Donald J. Trump is rightly being criticized for his risk that, if elected, he would deploy the Nationwide Guard and the army towards “the enemy from within,” a time period he has applied to political opponents corresponding to Rep. Adam B. Schiff and former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump’s defenders argue that his risk involved solely what Home Speaker Mike Johnson referred to as “marauding gangs of dangerous, violent people.” And Trump, after a lot coaxing from a Wall Road Journal columnist to “make clear” his earlier feedback, told the newspaper’s editorial board that he wouldn’t use the army towards his political opponents.
But there’s a extra rapid hazard from one other function of rhetoric coming from Trump, his running mate Sen. JD Vance and high Republican supporters: election denialism. After seeming to acknowledge that he misplaced to Joe Biden “by a whisker,” Trump retreated to his outdated falsehoods concerning the 2020 election in his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The previous president has since urged that he would lose to Harris this 12 months provided that there may be fraud. “They cheat,” he told a crowd at an Oct. 6 rally in Wisconsin. “That’s all they wish to do is cheat. And whenever you see this, it’s the one approach they’re going to win.”
The parable of election fraud appears to have stoked mistrust of the electoral system amongst many Trump supporters. Polls suggest that lots of them have issues that the 2024 election might be marred by fraud. It additionally might function a manifesto for essentially the most excessive MAGA supporters if Trump narrowly loses the election.
The riot on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is proof that lies can encourage Trump’s most unhinged supporters to have interaction in violence. Thankfully, the official counting of electoral votes has been designated a “Nationwide Particular Safety Occasion,” and afforded the identical stage of safety as presidential inaugurations and political conventions.
What about election day? Consultants imagine that violence at polling locations on Nov. 5 is unlikely, and steps have been taken since 2021 to protect polling places and websites the place votes are counted.
However sadly the potential of election day violence can’t be discounted utterly, given the extent of threats and harassment aimed at election officials. Some faculty districts whose campuses are used as polling facilities have gone as far as to cancel lessons on Nov. 5.
The greater danger within the occasion of an in depth election is perhaps violence or intimidation directed towards election employees and state officers within the interval between Nov. 6 and Jan. 6, 2025.
Suppose, as in 2020, early election returns reflecting in-person voting create a “red mirage” suggesting a Trump victory. However then mail-in ballots counted later alter the result in favor of the Democratic candidate. There can be nothing improper about such outcomes, however Trump supporters primed to be suspicious of the system may assume that there was foul play — and overreact, maybe violently.
That’s the reason Trump’s self-interested disparagement of the election system has been so corrosive, absurd as a few of his claims are. (He has asserted, for instance, that he would win California “if we had an trustworthy vote counter.”) On Monday, in response to a query at a information convention, Trump stated he hadn’t seen proof of dishonest — although he ominously added: “Sadly, I do know the opposite facet, and they aren’t good.”
“The No. 1 variable that will increase election violence is political leaders alleging election fraud,” stated Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow within the Democracy, Battle and Governance Program of the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace.
Higher late than by no means, Trump ought to cease sowing doubt about voting and put apart any considered responding to a loss in an in depth election with spurious claims of fraud.