People use electronic machines to vote on March 15 in Beach City, Ohio.
Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
In recent days, Donald Trump has been aggressively pushing the idea that the election is about to be stolen from him through voter fraud and dirty tricks. The Republican candidate, though, has not been a paragon of clarity when it comes to how the election is being rigged against him—Monday morning he tweeted that Hillary Clinton allegedly being fed questions before a Democratic primary debate was a kind of “voter fraud!” Here’s what we know, though, about what he’s said and why his claims that the election is being stolen have no basis whatsoever in reality.
When he’s been most specific, Trump has said that voters in “certain areas”—which his surrogate Rudy Giuliani confirmed to CNN’s Jake Tapper means inner cities where there are large numbers of people of color—would be voting five, 10, or even 15 times in states such as Pennsylvania. Trump has urged his almost entirely white supporters not only to watch their own polling stations, but to go to other polling stations looking for fraud in these areas made up mostly of black and Hispanic voters.
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To begin with, this idea of massive Democratic fraud is not new—Slate readers may remember my 2007 piece on the “fraudulent fraud squad” of Republican Party hucksters pushing these claims. It has happened again since then.
The truth is, though, that not only does zero evidence exist that this sort of fraud has taken place on any regular basis, but multiple voting simply cannot happen in any practical sense on a scale to influence a presidential election. To vote five, 10, or 15 times one would have to either register five, 10, or 15 times in different jurisdictions or with false names or go five, 10, or 15 times to polling places claiming to be someone else whose name is on the voter rolls, in the hopes that this person has not already voted and you would not get caught. And to do this on a scale for a presidential election, in a place such as Pennsylvania with millions of voters, you would need to pay tens of thousands of people, all without any way of verifying how they voted. What a stupid way to try to steal an election! That’s why in preparing my 2012 book, The Voting Wars, I could not find a single instance anywhere in the U.S. from the 1980s onward where massive impersonation fraud was used to try to steal an election.
The only recent instance I’m aware of concerning such multiple voting concerned a staunch supporter of Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and other Wisconsin Republicans. This man registered and voted about a dozen times in a few elections in multiple jurisdictions. He was caught and literally pleaded insanity, because such a plan is literally insane.
That’s not to say voter fraud is nonexistent. We do see occasional fraud with absentee ballots. Usually that involves vote-buying, where someone is paid to vote a certain way or someone steals someone else’s blank absentee ballot mailed from election officials and casts that ballot for a preferred candidate. But Pennsylvania does not have no-excuse absentee balloting, and the scale of trying to steal a presidential election with requested absentee ballots in a state where Trump is behind in polls by 6 to 9 percentage points would be quite easy to detect.
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Nor is it possible to simply hack into computers and change vote totals. I don’t like our decentralized voting system, but one advantage of voting in more than 10,000 different electoral jurisdictions is that there’s no central computer counting all the votes. In most places there is also a paper record of votes. In places like the parts of Pennsylvania that use electronic voting machines without paper trails, there is a cause for concern. But those machines are not centrally linked over the internet. (Still, in the name of public confidence, they should be junked as soon as possible and replaced with machines that allow a paper recount.) The apparent Russian hacks into voting systems, meanwhile, have been to steal lists of voters, not to manipulate vote-counting machines. The purpose of those hacks appears to be to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the elections—another area where Putin’s and Trump’s interests align—not to change actual totals.
Finally, vote-counting at county offices and elsewhere is a transparent act, with Republicans, Democrats, and good government groups watching the counting. When voting anomalies occur, generally because of human error, they are quickly caught and publicized on Twitter, and then corrected. Most election administrators doing the tabulating and reporting are dedicated public servants who want the process to be as transparent as possible to promote public confidence—not a cadre of Clinton-backing globalists who have secretly infiltrated the most local level of Democratic participation for just this moment. As the Columbus Dispatch reported of the prospect of rigging Ohio’s elections: “ ‘It would take Mission Impossible,’ said Terry Casey, a Republican consultant in Columbus who sat on the Franklin County Board of Elections for 14 years and is a former chairman of the Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners.”
None of this of course will convince die-hard Trump supporters and some Republican voters who have been primed to believe Democrats are regularly stealing elections. I hope they won’t get violent or intimidate voters on Election Day, as is seeming increasingly—and frighteningly—likely. For those of us living on planet Earth, we should dismiss Trump’s claims of vote-rigging as the rantings of someone who is either too stupid to know how voting works or too disingenuous to tell the truth.
@Trunk@Jack Paper@HCVisigoth G-D-IT! Thank you. I will simply plead (1) there were multiple cases filed in some Bush was the plaintiff (2) I was too lazy to go read the actual opinion to get the procedural background. Appears you are correct. Now go correct Weigel.
I'd like to think there's a special room reserved in Limbo for Trump where he's given stack upon stack of 2016 ballots, with the promise that if he counts them all he'll finally have proof that the election was stolen from him. But ironically he discovers that the ballots are too large for his stubby little fingers to handle.
Donald Trump attends an event on Saturday in Edison, New Jersey.
Kena Betancur/Getty Images
If Donald Trump loses the presidential election on Nov. 8, he will almost certainly claim that it was rigged. We know that because he’s already saying so, and he hasn’t even lost yet. Ever since polls turned decisively against Trump, he and his surrogates have insisted that some cabal involving the media, Hillary Clinton, and black people is fixing the election for the Democrats. Trump’s allegations have reached such a fever pitch that some Republican officials and politicians have refuted his allegations, appearing earnestly worried that he will undermine the legitimacy of our democracy.
Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers the law and LGBTQ issues.
It is interesting that Republicans have chosen to draw the line at Trump’s completely unfounded claims. For the past 16 years, the GOP has fervidly stoked Americans’ fears of voter fraud and repeatedly declared that Democrats were stealing elections without any basis in reality. Trump has merely escalated this rhetoric to a dangerous new level. Republicans are, of course, wise to condemn his wild conspiracies. But they cannot claim the moral high ground at this late date when the entire Republican Party had spent so long priming its base to believe every baseless word Trump utters about election fraud.
Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Fresno on May 27.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
By all accounts, Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign is imploding, with the latest revelations from a leaked 2005 Access Hollywood taping showing not only Trump’s disrespect for women but a boast about what amounts to a sexual assault. (Why anyone should be surprised by this given Trump’s previous statements and actions is hard to fathom; take the latest expressions of shock with a huge grain of salt).
Hillary Clinton, who was already leading in the polls and seemed likely to continue her lead despite new leaked revelations that she supports free trade and is cozier with banks and big business than she’s admitted (again, no surprise there for anyone paying attention), now seems even more likely to prevail. Trump has run the worst presidential campaign in modern history, judged only by the week after his poor debate performance featuring comments taking on a former beauty contestant as too fat, complaining about his microphone, supporting the convictions of the exonerated Central Park 5, and making new irresponsible claims about vote-rigging and Mexicans coming across the border to vote. And all of that came before the “grab them by the pussy” comments came out.
Donald Trump is mentally ill. After 16 months of campaigning and three general election debates, this has become all too clear. Trump sees himself as the victim of a web of conspiracies encompassing House Speaker Paul Ryan, the FBI, the CIA, and the Iraqi military. He sees events in his life—women who claim to have met him, violence by supporters at his rallies—as tentacles of these plots. He refuses to accept the outcome of the election, and he demands that his opponent be jailed, not because Trump is cynical but because he is paranoid.
Will Saletan writes about politics, science, technology, and other stuff for Slate. He’s the author of Bearing Right.
In Wednesday’s debate, as in previous encounters with Hillary Clinton, Trump kept his composure for the first 25 minutes. But he couldn’t hide his self-preoccupation. The first question was about the Supreme Court. Trump answered it by complaining that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had made “inappropriate statements towards me.” Later, Trump did what he has done at campaign rallies: recast bad news for others as good for himself. “The end of last week, they came out with an anemic jobs report,” he said. “I should win easily, it was so bad.”
Residents cast their ballots at a polling place inside the Elmwood Roller Skating Rink on Nov. 6, 2012, in Southwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images
Donald Trump doesn’t know how to lose. In 2013, when his show The Apprentice got stiffed by the Emmys, Trump said the process was unfair and political. In 2012, after Mitt Romney lost the race for president, Trump denounced the results as a fix for Barack Obama. He tweeted: “The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one! We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” After Trump lost delegates to Ted Cruz at state conventions in Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, North Dakota, and South Carolina, he denounced the process as “rigged.” And now that he’s losing to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, he has begun insisting that the game was rigged from the start.
Jamelle Bouie is Slate’s chief political correspondent.
“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary - but also at many polling places - SAD,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!” he tweeted Monday.
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When a young black man appears on screen in an American movie, there is a limited range of things his character can generally be expected to do. He can deal drugs or get addicted to drugs. He can get in fights, run from cops, get arrested, go to jail. If he’s lucky, he might get to be a cop (though often his luck runs out, and his white partner is spurred to acts of heroism by his buddy’s untimely death) or get out of jail (only to face the temptation of life back on the streets). Maybe he gets to fall in love with a good woman, but more often, he keeps that good woman down.
The main character in Barry Jenkins’ tender, lyrical, and stunning Moonlight—who’s known by a different name and played by a different actor in each of the film’s three distinct chapters—does engage in a few of the activities described above. But he also does things we almost never get to see a black male do on screen. He wrestles with the societal expectation that he project strength, invulnerability, and hypermasculine cool, even when he feels anything but strong or cool on the inside. In the transcendent nighttime scene that gives the film its title, he kisses another young black man on a beach. Most surprisingly of all, he cries. Not just once, in a single pent-up release of long-suppressed manly emotions, but several times, alone and in the company of others: sometimes from loneliness and rage, sometimes from relief and gratitude. Moonlight is one of those movies that showers its audience with blessings: raw yet accomplished performances from a uniformly fine cast, casually lyrical camerawork, and a frankly romantic soundtrack that runs the gamut from ’70s Jamaican pop to a Mexican folk song crooned by the Brazilian Caetano Veloso. But the film’s greatest gift may be that flood of cleansing tears—which, by the time this spare but affecting film was over, I was also shedding in copious volume.
Alleged Clinton scion Danney Williams—or someone claiming to be him—has Twitter and Facebook pages that continue to assert his genetic link to the 42nd president.
Democratic Senate candidates Catherine Cortez Masto, Katie McGinty, Patrick Murphy, and Ted Strickland.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Ethan Miller/Getty Images, Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Maddie McGarvey/Getty Images.
Sen. Marco Rubio dropped the oppo near the end of Monday’s Florida Senate debate with Rep. Patrick Murphy, the Democratic opponent he can’t fully shake off. All night Murphy had been trying to tie Rubio to Donald Trump. Over and over he would come back to the same line: that he couldn’t believe, could not believe, that Rubio would continue to support a man who had bragged about groping women.
This time, Rubio shot back: “You’re the one that posted a picture four years ago on Facebook of you groping a woman.” He was referring to this photo, where the youthful Murphy’s cupped hand is positioned conspicuously near a woman’s breast. “That’s inappropriate behavior.”
Donald Trump speaks to a crowd of supporters on Tuesday in Prescott Valley, Arizona.
Ralph Freso/Getty Images
Donald Trump spins so many tales—and goes after so many different groups and individuals—that it’s sometimes easy to miss his most invidious rhetoric. For months, the Republican presidential nominee has undermined confidence in our electoral system, warning his supporters that this election will be “rigged” and stolen through “voter fraud.”
Jamelle Bouie is Slate’s chief political correspondent.
Trump first told his supporters of this conspiracy theory at an Ohio rally in August and followed up the claim in an interview with Sean Hannity: “I’m telling you, Nov. 8, we’d better be careful because that election is going to be rigged. And I hope the Republicans are watching closely, or it’s going to be taken away from us.” This was in line with comments from his surrogates, like longtime adviser Roger Stone, who told Breitbart that Trump would begin to talk “constantly” about voter fraud. “He needs to say for example, today would be a perfect example: ‘I am leading in Florida. The polls all show it. If I lose Florida, we will know that there’s voter fraud.’ ” Stone continued: “‘If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.’” The implication is clear: If Trump loses, he should foment this “civil disobedience.” And he should start preparing his supporters for it now. He seems to be doing just that.
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President Barack Obama speaks on Feb. 27, 2009, at Goettge Memorial Field House in Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base, North Carolina.
Mandel Ngan/Getty Images
Barack Obama is a relatively popular politician, itself quite an accomplishment in the Age of No National Politicians Being Popular. Once he retires from the Oval Office and the public firing line, history will begin to buff his halo, the way it has with other recent ex-presidents. Like him or not, he has been an iconic figure in American history since the day he won the 2008 election. He still has a long life ahead of him. One would expect him to spend his post-presidency on something commensurate with this lofty status. Ending global hunger? World peace? The elimination of death? The death of sadness?
Attendees pray before a campaign event with Donald Trump, 2016 Republican presidential nominee, not pictured, in Henderson, Nevada, U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2016.
Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Attendees pray before a campaign event with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in Henderson, Nevada, on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2016.
Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
For most of the now almost-forgotten vice presidential debate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence kept his cool, ignoring, deflecting, or outright denying any effort by Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine to tie him to his running mate, Donald Trump. But it’s hard to keep your composure for the length of a debate. It takes work. And toward the end of the 90-minute showdown, Pence began to falter, and then with a single infelicitous phrase he evoked the only wall Trump will ever build: the one between the Republican Party and Latino voters.
The Hindus United Against Terror Charity Concert on Saturday in Edison, New Jersey, featured a Bollywood-style depiction of a terror attack.
Sara Hylton
Each week, Roads & Kingdoms and Slate publish a new dispatch from around the globe. For more foreign correspondence mixed with food, war, travel, and photography, visit its online magazine or follow @roadskingdoms on Twitter.
Prasanna Prashad is watching a dance performance inside the New Jersey Exposition and Convention Center on Saturday while eating a plate of pav bhaji, a Mumbai street snack. Two couples dancing onstage abruptly come to a stop. Two men wearing thobes, a traditional Arab garment, suddenly burst in carrying laser-beam guns and begin spraying imaginary bullets. A troop of prancing men in SWAT vests emerges, cartwheeling, shooting, and pummeling until the “terrorists” fall. Then, the soldiers and their freed hostages line up, hands on their hearts, and adopt solemn expressions as “The Star-Spangled Banner” begins to play.
Al Gore in December 2000, being not analagous to Donald Trump.
Luke Frazza/AFP/Getty Images
There’s a reasonable debate to be had about whether the media is overplaying the moment in Wednesday night’s debate when Donald Trump refused to say that he would accept the outcome of the election—the opposite of the answer he gave at the end of the first debate, when he was faring much better in polling. Maybe “everyday Americans,” to use Hillary Clinton’s favorite term, do not see what the big deal is. That would be a fair talking point from the Trump campaign.
Instead what I’ve mostly been seeing from Trump sympathizers and surrogates since the end of the debate has been an attempt to muddy the waters by raising Al Gore’s legal fight in 2000.
Mark Joseph Stern
@Trunk @Jack Paper @HCVisigoth G-D-IT! Thank you. I will simply plead (1) there were multiple cases filed in some Bush was the plaintiff (2) I was too lazy to go read the actual opinion to get the procedural background. Appears you are correct. Now go correct Weigel.
I'd like to think there's a special room reserved in Limbo for Trump where he's given stack upon stack of 2016 ballots, with the promise that if he counts them all he'll finally have proof that the election was stolen from him. But ironically he discovers that the ballots are too large for his stubby little fingers to handle.