Trump and other Republicans cast doubt on US election results

Former President Donald Trump posted messages on social media on Tuesday (1st) to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the midterm election in the state of Pennsylvania, in the United States. “Here we go again!” he wrote. “Running election!” he continued.

But what is Trump’s supposed evidence? He uses an article from a right-wing news site that showed no manipulation. Instead, the text raised unfounded suspicions about missing ballot data by not explaining them clearly.

In 2020, Trump and his allies have made a protracted effort to discredit the presidential election results in advance, spending months laying the groundwork for their bogus post-election claims that the election was stolen. Now, in the weeks leading up to Election Day 2022, some Republicans are employing similar — and equally dishonest — rhetoric.

Trump is not the only Republican trying to unfounded suspicions about the midterm elections in Pennsylvania, a state that can determine which party controls the US Senate.

After interim Pennsylvania election chief Leigh Chapman told NBC News last week that it could take “days” to complete the vote count, Republican candidate Doug Mastiano, who has repeatedly promoted false conspiracy theories about the election of 2020, declared on a program of the liberal organization Media Matters for America: “This is an attempt to fix”.

Is not. It simply takes time to count votes — especially, as Chapman noted, because the Republican-controlled state legislature refused to pass a no-compromise bill to allow counties to begin processing ballots by mail before Election Day morning. .

But other prominent Republicans continued. Texas Senator Ted Cruz tweeted a link to an article about Chapman’s comments and added: “Why do only Democratic blue cities take ‘days’ to count their votes? The rest of the country can do it on election night.”

Even though big cities that tend to lean toward Democrats have far more votes to count than small rural counties that tend to lean toward Republicans, Cruz’s claim is completely false.

Counties of all types across the country — including, as PolitiFact noted, some Republicans in Texas — do not complete their vote count on election night. In fact, it is impossible for many counties to do the final count on election night.

Even some of the more republican states in the country count absentee ballots (or, in some cases, ballots specifically from members of the military and foreign nationals) that arrive days after the election, as long as they are posted on polling day. And some states, including some led by Republicans, give voters days after the election to correct problems with their signatures or provide proof of identity they didn’t have.

US election officials do not declare winners or official vote totals on election night. Instead, the media make unofficial projections based on incomplete data.

The health challenges of the Democratic candidate in the Pennsylvania Senate race, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, were also used to cast preemptive doubt over the possible outcome.

After Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in 2020, some right-wing personalities insisted the election must have been stolen because Biden was such a bad candidate. At Fox last week, as Media Matters noted, prime-time host Tucker Carlson made a similar argument about the Pennsylvania Senate race — suggesting that people shouldn’t accept a Fetterman victory because it would be “transparently absurd” for them. a candidate who has struggled with the public, with speech and auditory processing problems since a stroke in May.

But there would be nothing suspicious about Fetterman winning in a state that Biden managed to win by more than 80,000 votes in 2020. The lieutenant governor has led many — though not all — polls. And surveys have repeatedly found that Pennsylvania voters continue to view him much better than his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Detroit, like other Democrat-dominated cities with large black populations, has been the target of false 2020 conspiracy theories from Trump and other politicians. Now, the Republican candidate for Michigan’s election chief is already challenging the validity of Detroit’s tens of thousands of votes in 2022.

Less than two weeks before Election Day, Kristina Karamo, who denies the 2020 election result and the Republican nominee for Michigan Secretary of State, has filed a lawsuit asking a court to “stop” the use of absentee ballots in Detroit if not obtained in person at a notary’s office. She also requested that only ballots obtained in person can be “validly voted” in this election.

Such a request would potentially mean the rejection of thousands of votes already legally cast by Detroiters – in the state whose constitution gives residents the right to request absentee ballots by mail.

Karamo’s attorney vaguely eased the request during closing arguments on Friday, the Detroit News reported. And other prominent Republicans have so far kept their distance from the case.

However, the process paves the way for Karamo, who is trailing in the opinion polls, to baselessly reject the legitimacy of a defeat.

Other Republican candidates have vaguely hinted at the possibility that Democrats somehow cheated on Election Day or during the vote count.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told reporters this week that “we’ll see what happens” when asked about accepting the results of his re-election race, the Washington Post reported, adding: “I mean, something is going to happen in the election. ? Day? Do the Democrats have something up their sleeve?”

The Daily Beast reported that Blake Masters, the Republican nominee for Senate in a tight Arizona race, told about how he can’t prove it’s not true that if he beats Democratic Senator Mark Kelly by 30,000 votes, unidentified people won’t just go “find 40 grand” for Kelly. Masters told a similar story at an event in June.

There is no basis for the suggestion that there could be tens of thousands of fraudulent votes added to any state’s count. But Masters’ comment, like Karamo’s lawsuit, hits the effect of many of Trump’s 2020 pre-election tales: mainstream Republican voters are wary of any outcome that doesn’t go their way.