Donald J. Trump is rightly being criticized for his menace that, if elected, he would deploy the Nationwide Guard and the navy in opposition to “the enemy from within,” a time period he has applied to political opponents comparable to Rep. Adam B. Schiff and former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump’s defenders argue that his menace involved solely what Home Speaker Mike Johnson known 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 navy in opposition to his political opponents.
But there’s a extra quick hazard from one other characteristic of rhetoric coming from Trump, his running mate Sen. JD Vance and prime Republican supporters: election denialism. After seeming to acknowledge that he misplaced to Joe Biden “by a whisker,” Trump retreated to his previous falsehoods concerning the 2020 election in his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The previous president has since advised that he would lose to Harris this yr provided that there’s fraud. “They cheat,” he told a crowd at an Oct. 6 rally in Wisconsin. “That’s all they need 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 a lot of them have issues that the 2024 election can be marred by fraud. It additionally may function a manifesto for probably 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 protect polling places and websites the place votes are counted.
However sadly the opportunity of election day violence can’t be discounted fully, 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 a detailed election is perhaps violence or intimidation directed in opposition to election staff 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 end 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 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 don’t seem to be 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.
