Donald J. Trump is rightly being criticized for his risk that, if elected, he would deploy the Nationwide Guard and the navy towards “the enemy from inside,” a time period he has utilized 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 known as “marauding gangs of harmful, violent individuals.” And Trump, after a lot coaxing from a Wall Road Journal columnist to “make clear” his earlier feedback, informed the newspaper’s editorial board that he wouldn’t use the navy towards his political opponents.
But there’s a extra quick hazard from one other characteristic of rhetoric coming from Trump, his working 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 previous falsehoods in regards to 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 yr provided that there’s fraud. “They cheat,” he informed a crowd at an Oct. 6 rally in Wisconsin. “That’s all they need to do is cheat. And if 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 counsel that a lot of them have considerations that the 2024 election might be marred by fraud. It additionally may 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 interact in violence. Luckily, 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 defend polling locations 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 geared toward election officers. Some college districts whose campuses are used as polling facilities have gone as far as to cancel courses on Nov. 5.
The better hazard within the occasion of a detailed election may be 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 “purple mirage” suggesting a Trump victory. However then mail-in ballots counted later alter the result in favor of the Democratic candidate. There could be nothing improper about such outcomes, however Trump supporters primed to be suspicious of the system would possibly 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 mentioned he hadn’t seen proof of dishonest — although he ominously added: “Sadly, I do know the opposite aspect, and they aren’t good.”
“The No. 1 variable that will increase election violence is political leaders alleging election fraud,” mentioned 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 a detailed election with spurious claims of fraud.
