Trump has so far refused to say unequivocally that he will respect the results of the upcoming election, which will see him to go up against Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic candidate.
During a presidential debate In June, he said he would only accept the result if “it was a fair, legal and good election.” He then quickly added that he would have “rather accepted” the 2020 results as well, “but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous.”
More recently, on September 7, Trump published on his Truth Social platform that if he wins in November, “people who CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including lengthy prison sentences.”
He said this could include lawyers, donors and “corrupt election officials,” among others.
“Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, arrested and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never before seen in our country,” he wrote.
During this election cycle, much of Trump’s talk about voter fraud has focused on people who are not U.S. citizens.
But Carter, of the Brennan Center, described this as a “non-issue.” Voting by noncitizens is illegal under U.S. law – it carries penalties including imprisonment and possible deportation – and research shows This is extraordinarily rare.
Yet the Republicans, who have made anti-immigrant policies Democrats have made it a core part of their policy agenda to allow undocumented immigrants to enter the United States to get their votes. In June, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives even passed a bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote.
The idea that the United States is plagued by election fraud has become a kind of “bogeyman,” Carter said, and Trump and his allies are using it as “a false justification to try to undermine valid election results.”
It is also used to justify a wave of voting restrictions across the country.
Some states have made it harder to register to vote and vote by mail or have implemented stricter voter ID requirements.
“The most aggressive years of restrictive voting legislation in the last decade came after the 2020 election, and that’s not a coincidence,” Carter said.
She told Al Jazeera that Americans in 28 states will face restrictions in November that were not in place the last time they voted for the president. “These measures all have one thing in common,” she added, “which is that they disproportionately impact voters of color.”
Many new voting restrictions have been implemented Swing States that had close races in 2020. Those same states are expected to be tight again when Trump faces Harris in November.
For example, Georgia and Florida have both made voting more difficult and increased the risk of intimidation, the Brennan Center said in a recent reportNorth Carolina has also put in place more barriers to voting.
At the same time, there is also concern about efforts to place Holocaust deniers in key positions in the American electoral system.
In the key state of Georgia, for example, the state Board of Elections adopted a new rule in August that could delay election certification (the process by which vote counts are confirmed) if local officials raise concerns about the accuracy of the vote.
“Certification is supposed to be a ministerial process, a formality, that happens after an election is over,” Carter said. “But it’s now increasingly politicized, so efforts to block certification are efforts to corrupt the election results.”
