How Trump Is Already Setting The Groundwork To Challenge The 2024 Election Results If He Loses

With a month and alter to go earlier than the election, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his allies are already laying the groundwork to contest the outcomes of the 2024 election if he loses by participating in a false marketing campaign round the specter of noncitizen voting.

Trump and Republican leaders, from Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to GOP secretaries of state who oversee elections, have pushed the narrative that the 2024 elections are being deliberately corrupted by mass noncitizen voting.

Noncitizen voting is “a transparent and current hazard,” Johnson claimed at a Could press convention saying federal laws mandating proof of citizenship to register to vote.

In his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris final month, Trump took issues additional, falsely claiming that Democrats enable immigrants into the nation to get them to vote illegally.

“They’ll’t even communicate English. They don’t even know what nation they’re in, virtually. And these individuals are making an attempt to get them to vote, and that’s why they’re permitting them into our nation,” Trump mentioned.

In the meantime, GOP secretaries of state, together with Ohio’s Frank LaRose and Alabama’s Wes Allen, and Texas’ GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, made headlines saying purges of supposed noncitizens from their voter rolls. Texas has additionally mobilized law enforcement to crack down on voter registration activities by Latino activist teams, raiding their houses and intimidating them from participating in politics.

This technique has been led by Trump and his allies in Congress and round his marketing campaign. It has been joined by high-profile conservative voices like billionaire Elon Musk and former Fox News character Tucker Carlson. And it has been organized by election deniers by means of the conservative election denial group Election Integrity Network, run by Cleta Mitchell, a conservative lawyer who backed Trump’s effort in 2020 to steal the election.

Now, with simply weeks to go within the election, the noncitizen voting allegations have entered the courts. Starting in August, the Republican Party, a Trump-allied authorized nonprofit run by his adviser, Stephen Miller, and a grassroots election denial group filed a string of lawsuits looking for large purges of voters they declare to be both noncitizens or in any other case illegitimately registered to vote whereas suggesting that elections can’t be licensed in the event that they don’t get their means.

These lawsuits aren’t solely riddled with unsubstantiated claims of noncitizen voting and defective information evaluation claiming mass voter fraud — all of them search a treatment that’s unlawful. Federal regulation prohibits election officers from eradicating registered voters from the rolls inside a 90-day blackout period prior to an election, a interval that started on Aug. 7. Courts can’t order voter purges after that date.

These lawsuits may have been filed earlier in 2024, when a courtroom may order officers to evaluate voters’ citizenship standing or different potential registration errors and take away them from the rolls. However the teams submitting these fits all waited till this treatment was not possible. As an alternative, these lawsuits seem like a part of a concerted public relations marketing campaign to forged doubt on the end result of the election if Trump loses once more, in addition to present a post-election justification to native officers to refuse to certify the vote.

“They’re pre-deploying a giant misinform justify their future efforts to disrupt or overturn elections,” mentioned Wendy Weiser, a lawyer with the Brennan Middle for Justice, a voting rights group, who’s concerned in difficult these lawsuits.

In 2020, Trump and the Republican Celebration pointed to election regulation adjustments enacted because of the COVID-19 pandemic that made it simpler for voters to forged their ballots with out showing in individual to say President Joe Biden’s win was fraudulent. Trump’s “huge lie” induced a chaotic rush following the election as he sought to toss out the legitimate votes of hundreds of thousands of Individuals, culminating within the tried revolt on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump’s second impeachment and his indictment on a number of felony counts.

Trump continues to embrace the lies about 2020, and Republicans have largely adopted swimsuit. Extra of them belief Trump’s phrase over authorities certification of election outcomes, in line with an Associated Press poll performed this yr.

With no pandemic voting adjustments to depend on, Republicans are actually hanging their hat on the problem of noncitizen voting to supply the narrative construction for false post-election fraud claims.

After all, just like the lies round voting in 2020, Republicans’ claims of mass noncitizen voting are completely made up. Noncitizen voting is already unlawful in all federal and state elections below a number of legal guidelines. It’s also vanishingly uncommon.

A database maintained by the conservative Heritage Basis, which has been promoting falsehoods about noncitizen voting, lists just 68 legal actions taken in opposition to noncitizens for voting in federal elections going again to the Nineteen Eighties. In the meantime, a study by the progressive Brennan Center discovered that election officers throughout 42 jurisdictions in 12 states discovered simply 30 circumstances of suspected noncitizen voting following the 2016 election. For perspective, that accounts for 0.0001% of the votes forged in these jurisdictions. Even Trump’s personal election fraud activity pressure failed to find any evidence of systematic or widespread fraud, together with involving noncitizens in elections.

Republicans even acknowledge that their claims are unproven however as an alternative cling to the falsehood of mass noncitizen voting as an article of religion.

“Everyone knows, intuitively, that loads of illegals are voting in federal elections, nevertheless it’s not been one thing that’s simply provable,” Johnson mentioned in Could, citing no proof.

Within the absence of any precise proof of widespread noncitizen voting, the lawsuits introduced by Trump’s allies depend on defective information, misreadings of election regulation and outright fabrication to argue that election officers should purge their voter rolls with weeks to go within the election.

“These guys are going to strive no matter they will,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes mentioned. “They’ve discovered themselves in a spot the place both their candidates or their views have gotten much less and fewer in style, so that they’ve received to govern of us outdoors the common points.”

Fontes’ workplace is a goal — together with each county election officer in Arizona — of a lawsuit brought by Miller’s America First Legal Foundation that seeks to require the state’s federal election voters to supply citizenship paperwork.

Arizona presently has a two-track voting system, through which voters should present completely different paperwork relying on what sort of election they’re voting in. Folks should present proof of citizenship to vote in state and native elections, whereas those that don’t present such proof can solely vote in nationwide elections resulting from federal legal guidelines limiting burdens positioned on voter registration. In 2020, Trump used the variety of federal-only voters to falsely declare that 36,000 noncitizens illegally voted — supposedly costing him a win within the state.

AFLF’s swimsuit doesn’t embrace any proof or verifiable claims of noncitizen voting in Arizona (or elsewhere). As an alternative, the group cites polling performed by the conservative pollster Rasmussen Experiences for the anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, claiming that 1.9% of probably Arizona voters mentioned they weren’t U.S. residents and one other 1.2% mentioned they weren’t certain of their citizenship standing.

“Subsequently, collectively, simply over three % of probably Arizona voters within the survey disclaimed citizenship,” the lawsuit states.

Responses to ballot questions, nevertheless, don’t represent proof that any of the respondents are both noncitizens or have ever forged an unlawful vote as noncitizens. As an alternative, they probably reveal the share of respondents who weren’t taking note of the ballot they have been taking.

A 2014 paper by political science experts John Ahlquist, Kenneth Mayer and Simon Jackman discovered that ballot respondents have been equally more likely to declare to have been kidnapped by aliens previously 12 months as to have engaged in voter impersonation (illegally voting as somebody aside from themselves) within the 2012 election.

“[T]he decrease sure of the inhabitants admitting to voter impersonation is identical as that admitting to alien abduction, main us to conclude that any decrease sure estimate for voter impersonation is essentially the results of respondent error moderately than a real self-report of habits,” Ahlquist, Mayer and Jackson wrote.

In North Carolina, the Republican Nationwide Committee and the Republican Celebration of North Carolina allege that the state elections board is refusing to comply with a regulation handed by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature in July that required the board to take away voters from the rolls in the event that they match jury recordsdata for individuals claiming to be noncitizens to get out of jury obligation.

The RNC’s lawsuit supplies no proof that any noncitizen has voted. As an alternative, it merely argues that as a result of the state authorities experiences that “roughly 325,000 ‘unauthorized’ immigrants” reside within the state, “there could also be important numbers of non-citizens who’ve registered to vote.”

The allegation that the board isn’t complying with North Carolina regulation is “categorically false,” board spokesman Patrick Gannon mentioned in an announcement over e-mail.

County clerks supplied the board with lists of registered voters who claimed to be noncitizens to be excused from jury obligation in August, in line with Gannon. The board then in contrast these lists with state voter registration data and located a complete of 9 voters who matched. These 9 individuals can be checked in opposition to state and federal databases to see whether or not they’re residents. If they’re certainly noncitizens, the board will ship them letters inviting them to cancel their registrations. That is the method the board should comply with due to the 90-day blackout interval prohibiting voter purges so near an election.

“We ask that the NCGOP and RNC instantly rescind their press releases on this matter, as they’ll undermine voter confidence on a wholly false premise,” Gannon mentioned.

As for these 9 registered voters who claimed to be noncitizens to get out of jury obligation, there is no such thing as a proof right now that they really are.

“Usually people who find themselves residents are simply making an attempt to get out of jury obligation,” mentioned Lis Frost, a lawyer with the Elias Regulation Group, a Democratic Celebration-aligned regulation agency responding to those lawsuits.

These lawsuits in Arizona and North Carolina lack any actual proof. Nevertheless, they pale compared to the sweeping, evidence-free claims made by one other group in lawsuits throughout seven states the place a ruling would fall throughout the 90-day blackout interval.

United Sovereign Individuals is a grassroots group promoting the idea that every election across the country is effectively illegitimate resulting from its claims of corrupted voter rolls. It was based in 2023 by election denial activist Marly Hornik, whose canvassing effort aimed toward proving election fraud within the 2022 New York state elections led the state’s legal professional basic to concern a cease-and-desist letter.

The group now claims that upward of 10 million votes cast in the 2022 elections across 20 states were illegitimate and shouldn’t have been counted. Its lawsuits in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas all make comparable claims that the states’ voter rolls include error charges that exceed the extent allowed by federal regulation and that they need to due to this fact not be licensed. The group explicitly states that the variety of lawsuits it has filed is in an effort to get their declare earlier than the Supreme Court docket earlier than the 2024 election.

To make such a sweeping declaration, the group depends on an information evaluation of voter registration recordsdata to search out supposed errors akin to duplicate voter registrations, altered birthdates, backdated registrations, registrations on weekends or federal holidays, and the failure to incorporate a social safety or driver’s license quantity, amongst different issues.

Most of their complaints about supposed errors in state voter rolls, nevertheless, seem like the results of their very own defective methodology for reviewing the info, misreadings of election regulation and potential clerical errors.

The group’s greatest drawback is that its information evaluation methodology is flawed. The analyst it relied on compiled Maryland voter registration information from a number of years right into a single spreadsheet to search for questionable registrations, in line with a brief filed by the Brennan Center in a case the group introduced in Maryland earlier this yr. However each time a voter updates their registration data, a brand new line is created within the state’s datafile, offering a brand new distinctive voter ID quantity. By combining a number of years of knowledge, United Sovereign Individuals’ datafile produced quite a few false positives for duplicate voter registrations, which it cites as proof of errors within the voter file.

In its lawsuit in North Carolina, the group makes comparable allegations of excessive charges of errors which might be equally incorrect. It claims that 209,718 voters lacked a social safety or driver’s license quantity of their registration, in addition to that 207,196 voters registered on a weekend or federal vacation.

However there is no such thing as a regulation stopping voters from registering on weekends or holidays — as a resident may do by means of the state’s on-line voter registration portal.

As for the dearth of a social safety or driver’s license quantity, some voters registered to vote earlier than federal regulation first mandated the inclusion of a social safety or driver’s license quantity for voter registration data in 2005. In different circumstances, a number of the matches the group cites are married girls who modified their final names. Lastly, North Carolina state regulation requires voters to point out identification once they seem to vote.

“Till they create any proof, we don’t have something to debate right here,” mentioned David Becker, the chief director of the nonpartisan nonprofit Middle for Election Innovation & Analysis. “Why didn’t they create these lawsuits till the blackout window? I feel the reply is fairly clear. That is about politics and about feeding the lie that the election was stolen.”

When Trump lied about election fraud in 2020, it was solely the primary a part of his push to overturn the election. He additionally sought to exploit the process for counting electoral votes, first by producing alternate slates of electors from key swing states, then by pressuring former Vice President Mike Pence to make use of these alternate slates to disclaim Biden the vote in states he received. Lastly, when none of that labored, Trump incited a violent mob on Congress to derail the counting of these votes.

This half-baked plan didn’t work — and it could be not possible to do once more in 2024. Harris, not Pence or one other GOP official, will preside over the counting of the electoral votes. In the meantime, Congress has since reformed the Electoral Count Act to make it not possible for states to submit alternate electors. It’s additionally unlikely that any GOP electors would wish to comply with Trump’s plans after 35 of his fraudulent electors were indicted for his or her actions in 2020.

As an alternative, because the United Sovereign Individuals lawsuits make plain, any effort to contest the end result of the election this yr would run by means of efforts by native GOP election officers refusing to certify the election.

“[Certification] is the lever that election conspiracy theorists see as the perfect alternative in the event that they don’t like the selection the voters have made,” mentioned Ben Berwick, head of litigation for Shield Democracy, a nonprofit that counters election denial.

Election deniers first took purpose on the certification course of in 2020, when two Republican members of the four-member canvassing board in Wayne County, Michigan (which incorporates Detroit), initially selected their very own to refuse to certify the county’s election amid a flurry of false claims of voter fraud fueled by Trump.

“Wow! Michigan simply refused to certify the election outcomes! Having braveness is a phenomenal factor. The USA stands proud!” Trump posted on social media on the time.

The 2 canvassing board members, nevertheless, shortly relented below excessive stress from native voters and the nationwide consideration their motion introduced. That was not earlier than Trump and then-RNC chair Ronna McDaniel attempted to pressure the board members into maintaining their refusal. However the concept caught maintain within the bigger election denial motion.

In 2022, county GOP officers tasked with certifying elections in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina and Pennsylvania voted in opposition to certification in each the first and basic elections. Their refusals didn’t essentially move from a loss by a selected candidate, however as a part of a basic mistrust of election outcomes following Trump’s marketing campaign of election fraud lies in 2020. The officers refused to certify based mostly on debunked and in any other case wild conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Methods and the way “sizzling canine tongs may have breached” voting machines, in addition to refusals to abide by courtroom selections relating to the counting of sure mailed ballots.

These votes in opposition to certification have been all overwhelmed again. The certification of elections is a nondiscretionary ministerial duty of the officers who oversee it, that means it’s unlawful to impose their private political opinions on the method. In every case, the specter of — or precise — courtroom orders to provide writs mandating certification compelled the arms of practically all of those officers. Each county’s election outcomes have been in the end licensed because of the intervention of state officers and the courts.

However in 2024, that hasn’t stopped the unfold of GOP fantasies of blocking the certification of election outcomes. There are presently at the very least 35 election deniers in place to vote in opposition to certification in counties throughout the nation, in line with a report by the liberal watchdog group Residents for Accountability and Ethics in Washington.

“There are going to be quite a few counties throughout the nation not certifying,” mentioned Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections on the pro-voting rights nonprofit Widespread Trigger. “It’s going to be much more than in earlier years as there’s a far more organized marketing campaign round this habits that’s being pushed by the proper.”

And that is the place any effort to steal the election begins to crumble.

Those that assist not certifying the elections imagine that denying or delaying county certification would stop state officers from certifying the statewide winner by the Dec. 11 deadline imposed by the Electoral Rely Reform Act. This might then lead a whole state’s outcomes to be excluded from the electoral vote rely in Congress on Jan. 6, 2025 — which may in flip have clearly catastrophic ends in an in depth race.

This state of affairs is one motive why election watchdogs have been so involved about the actions taken by the three GOP members of the Georgia State Election Board. The board has just lately handed divisive new guidelines, akin to mandating the hand-counting of election ballots, that would create important delays in each the preliminary vote counting course of and the certification of these outcomes by native officers. Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has spoken out in opposition to the board’s guidelines, warning that it was “destroying voter confidence” in elections.

Whereas this case could also be regarding and outlandish, it additionally runs counter to the precise guidelines already in place, which carry the backing of the remainder of the governmental machine. First, it’s unlawful for native officers to refuse to certify election outcomes. In every earlier case, courts have stepped in to pressure wayward officers to certify in no unsure phrases. And if these native officers nonetheless refuse, they are often indicted and prosecuted, as happened to two officials in Cochise County, Arizona.

“We’ve received just a little little bit of a hammer right here in Arizona in that we’re form of working below the FAFO rule — fiddle and discover out,” Fontes mentioned, utilizing an acronym for the phrase “fuck round and discover out.”

Second, county-level certification refusals don’t impression state government selections to certify the statewide outcomes, that means states may go forward and ensure their electoral votes it doesn’t matter what the county officers select to do. Third, the Electoral Rely Reform Act particulars directions for courts to listen to circumstances involving certification that happen after the Dec. 11 deadline on an especially expedited foundation, giving officers yet one more path to verify the outcomes regardless of opposition stalling. Lastly, and maybe most significantly, Trump-backed election deniers who ran for key places of work overseeing elections in swing states in 2022 all lost.

Democratic and Republican officers throughout the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin adamantly assert that they’ll combat certification refusals within the courts, seize the facility to certify county election outcomes if needed and honor the precise winner of their states.

After all, Trump’s efforts to steal the 2020 election were laughable at the time — until they weren’t. Any try to illegally overturn the 2024 election may but once more trigger chaos and violence the place unlikely issues can transpire. Nonetheless, election specialists anticipate the dam to carry.

“Whereas their technique will fail, there’s no line they received’t cross,” Becker mentioned. “The interval after the election may very well be very risky, however I’m 100% assured the winner could have their hand on the Bible on Jan. 20.”