As with most Republican whisper campaigns, Donald Trump has traded the whisper for a bellow. He’s blown past the the none-too-subtle notion that someone, somewhere might possibly be voting in error, and straight on into claims about organized vote fraud, with elections swayed by people who treat the line at the polls as a revolving door.
RUCKER: Do you think someone can vote multiple times?
TRUMP: Multiple times. How about like 10 times. Why not? If you don’t have voter ID, you can just keep voting and voting and voting.
And that there will be widespread cheating by the Clinton campaign.
The only way we can lose, in my opinion — I really mean this, Pennsylvania is if cheating goes on … She can’t beat what’s happening here. The only way they can beat it in my opinion, and I mean this 100 percent, if in certain sections of the state they cheat.”
Meaning things 100% in Trumpland doesn’t mean they won’t be waved off as “sarcasm” the next day, but in this case, what Trump is throwing out isn’t off-the-top of his head, it's a strategy. And what Trump really means is the same thing other Republicans mean when they talk about vote fraud and voter ID: Republicans can’t win unless they can suppress the black vote.
… Mr. Trump’s language has moved beyond his party’s call for rigid identification requirements and the unfounded claims that polls are “skewed” to predictions of outright theft of the November election. And his warnings have been cast in increasingly urgent and racially suggestive language, hinting that the only legitimate outcome in certain states would be his victory. …
Darrell L. Clarke, Philadelphia’s City Council president, said the racial overtones of Mr. Trump’s remarks were clear.
“When you talk about ‘certain areas’ in Pennsylvania, we all know what that means,” he said. “He’s talking about Philadelphia and some of the urban areas.”
Taking the incidents of genuine voter fraud that have happened across the nation in the last decade and putting them all together, would still be unlikely to sway the outcome of a single city council race in the tiniest burg.
But the results of voter intimidation and vote suppression? Donald Trump is betting it might just mean the presidency. And if it doesn’t … then what?
It’s no coincidence that the Trump campaign entered into this strategy as Trump’s poll numbers were sinking ever lower. On the day Trump claimed he could only lose Pennsylvania through cheating, state polls showed him anywhere from five to eleven points behind Hillary Clinton.
In Pennsylvania, where he recently made such an argument on the campaign trail, Mr. Trump is well behind the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, in polls. No Republican has won the state in a presidential election since 1988.
Nonetheless, Mr. Trump has said the race could be snatched from him there. His campaign is urging people to sign up as election workers to watch voters as they cast their ballots on Nov. 8, fueling concerns about voter intimidation on Election Day.
Drawing a line at Pennsylvania sets a standard that sweeps nearly every swing state into Trump’s “if I didn’t win, I was cheated” drawer. It’s very deliberately not a state where polling is actually close.
Trump’s campaign isn’t know for subtly, and they’re not being subtle now. They mean to devalue the polls,
Last week, Mr. Trump hired as his campaign chief Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart, a conservative news website that has frequently given voice to Mr. Trump’s claims of a manipulated process, holding forth on perceived voter fraud and “propaganda polls” showing Mrs. Clinton ahead.
Continue to press the idea that non-existent voter fraud is a widespread problem,
And on Friday, Mr. Trump released his first campaign ad, focused on immigration, featuring an image of a polling site with the word “rigged” flashing onscreen less than two seconds after the spot begins.
And discount the actual results of the election.
Mr. Hasen said that while it initially seemed Mr. Trump was merely seeking an early scapegoat for a possible loss, his language had taken a darker turn. A Pew Research Center survey released last week showed that 51 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters have little or no confidence in the accuracy of the vote count nationally, a drastic change from supporters of the Republican nominees in 2004 and 2008.
Donald Trump’s tactics in talking about vote fraud are, like most of his campaign, simply what Republicans have been saying for decades raised to a fever pitch. His claim is that voter ID laws are needed, because minority voters are the ones cheating Republicans out of wins. In response he’s calling for more intimidation of minority voters.
But Trump is doing more than just preparing his red-hats to interfere with voting in minority precincts. He’s planning for what happens after the numbers don’t come out his way. And that should worry everyone.