Since the election, President Donald Trump has ceaselessly alleged that victory was stolen from him in a massive voter fraud conspiracy, but these claims have little truth to them, if any. It is crucial for the American people to understand how serious of a problem these voter fraud claims are, as they are untrue, hypocritical and dangerous.

Trump’s claims have come at a time when ideological tensions have been high, with Black Lives Matter protests occurring in over three hundred cities by Jun. 7, according to Aljazeera, during which much conflict between the protesters and counterprotesters has broken out. At various protests across the nation, the left-wing anti-facist group Antifa and the right-wing group Proud Boys have been at the center of the violence, something which Trump’s claims and the resulting further separation between the right and left are not helping to prevent or discourage. Trump’s claims are also hypocritical;  in a couple of instances, he himself has encouraged intimidation and fraud.

“[The people of the United States will] go out and they’ll vote, and they are going to have to go and check their vote by going to the polls and voting that way,” Trump said in an interview with WECT-TV on Sept. 2. “because if it tabulates then they won’t be able to do that.”

Trump failed to mention that it is possible to track your ballot without attempting to vote twice and having to risk committing fraud. While this is certainly subtle, Trump also said some questionable things to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf on Nov. 2, after claiming that the Supreme Court’s ruling to allow Pennsylvania to extend their vote counting period by three days was a “dangerous” decision.

“We’re all watching,” Trump said. “We’re all watching you, governor. We have a lot of eyes on the governor and his friends.”

In response, Wolf tweeted: “Pennsylvanians will not be intimidated. You can watch us count every vote and have a fair election.”

 

Pennsylvanians will not be intimidated.

You can watch us count every vote and have a fair election. https://t.co/WzH7OAJEvU

— Governor Tom Wolf (@GovernorTomWolf) November 3, 2020

Not only is this extremely hypocritical, but again, encouraging intimidation could easily lead to more unnecessary violence. On top of this, most of these claims have no truth to them whatsoever. Even Trump’s own Attorney General William Barr spoke out against these false stolen-election claims.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the Associated Press on Dec. 1. He also noted that that could change as investigations continue.

Some of Trump’s specific claims include ballot-dumping, the prominence of dead voters and the refusal of Republican poll-watchers.

Trump claimed that Republican poll-watchers had been not allowed to do their job in Allegheny and Philadelphia counties, even saying that “they were thrown out of the building”. This is completely false, however, as the counting in Philadelphia was live streamed, and Trump’s lawyers even admitted Republican poll-watchers were indeed present.

As for the dead voters claim, they come up in every election according to Jason Roberts, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill political science professor. Both the Associated Press and FactCheck.org were informed by experts that so-called dead voters are very uncommon and usually the result of honest mistakes or software issues with no malicious intent to sway the election.

As for the accusations of ballot-dumping, they too are baseless, intended to cover up a sequence of events that are actually quite logical if one takes even a minute to consider.

“[This election is] about big leads on election night, tremendous leads, leads where I was being congratulated for a decisive easy victory,” Trump said at the White House on Dec. 2. “All of a sudden, by morning or a couple of days later, those leads rapidly evaporated.”

The simple answer is that Trump, who had spent many weeks demonizing mail-in voting, had more of his voters cast their ballots in person. These ballots were counted much quicker than those that were mailed in, which leaned Democrat. Also, laws exist in Pennsylvania and Michigan, two massive swing-states, that prevent any counting of mail-in ballots prior to election night, meaning these primarily Democrat votes would be tallied even later there. To top it off, in Pennsylvania further restrictions made simply preparing mail-in ballots to be counted wait until election day.

“Pennsylvania is unfortunately one of four states, I understand, in the entire country, who’s legislature has not allowed the counties to start pre-canvasing the ballots before election day,” Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar said on Oct. 20 during a virtual event conducted by Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

All of these false or misleading claims are emphasized by the ultimate joint statement from Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees, two groups from Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, a federal agency.

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history,” The statement released on Nov. 12 said. “[…] There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised. […] While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.”

So when the president makes claims that he had his power stolen from him that are disputed by both those around him and literal facts, it becomes clear just how dangerous Trump is in this position, because he still has tens of millions of supporters across the nation.

In Portland, many have seen the aggression and tension that has grown between protesters and counter protesters, and even the occasional act of violence, including the killing of a 39-year-old Patriot Prayer member, a right-wing group, named Aaron Danielson, after he and Michael Reinoehl allegedly engaged in an altercation. Imagine what level of violence that Trump’s claims could cause. One may draw a gruesome connection to the threat Trump’s lies pose to the United States and when Trump requested that Proud Boys “stand back and stand by”. All it would take for Trump to incite violence between left- and right-wing groups, purposeful or not, would be one more ambiguous and vague statement to be interpreted by right-wing groups as a call to action.

“Definitely,” Cindy Nguyen, a senior and Government student said when asked if Trump’s claims of voter fraud could result in violence. “For sure. I would say, it almost has already happened. Like, related to the election I’m sure in some areas, something like that definitely happened. There was a lot of fear around people having protests and counter protests, and there’s no way, like, in my eyes, I don’t think there would be any way that there wasn’t a scuffle between counter protesters and the like.”

Trump’s claims are not just dangerous for public safety, but also the integrity of the United States’ democracy. When someone has so much control over so many people, both everyday Americans and government officials, it is not unreasonable to believe that they pose an immense threat to the United States’ democracy, however unlikely it may be.

“I say yes,” AP Government student, Constitution Team member and senior Zoe Gadbow said when asked if Trump’s claims pose a threat to the United States’ democracy. “I think they do, unfortunately. He and his supporters have proven that when science and fact does not prevail, they still will. And I think that the half of the United States that voted for him, I mean they’re still supporting him for some reason, and that’s a lot of people who could refuse to let Joe Biden move into the oval office.”

Some may bring forth the infamous quote from Trump’s opponent, now President-Elect Joseph Biden, that seemingly had him confess to having committed widespread voter fraud, as evidence that Biden has admitted to doing exactly what Trump has been claiming that he did.

“[Voting] can get complicated, because the Republicans are doing everything they can to make it harder for people to vote,” Biden said on the Oct. 24 episode of the political podcast Pod Save America, in response to being asked what his message was to Americans who had not voted was. “Particularly people of color to vote. So go to iwillvote.com. Secondly, we’re in a situation where we have put together, and you guys did it for President Obama’s administration before this, we have put together, I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics. What the president is trying to do is discourage people from voting by implying that their vote won’t be counted, it can’t be counted, we’re going to challenge it and all these things.”

In context, this quote is a lot less damning. Biden is well known for his mistakes while speaking and his stutter. This is clearly a case of Trump’s supporters stripping this quote of all context in order to bring doubt onto Biden and his integrity. What this quote does show is that one of the most incriminating pieces of evidence for Trump’s voter fraud claims that the right has against Biden are his honest mistakes taken out of context, whereas the left has Trump making vague threats to a swing-state governor and encouraging Americans to vote by mail and then try to vote again in person instead of simply monitoring their votes.

Trump’s presidency is ending in a mountain of lies, and very hypocritical and dangerous ones at that. Not only do they radicalize and thus separate left- and right-wing Americans even more, risking violent conflict, but they have also resulted in tens of millions of Americans blindly supporting him and his administration as they try to undermine the United States’ democracy. As the time between now and Biden’s inauguration shrinks with Trump’s window of time to prevent it shrinking with it, the country will soon be left to wonder what we can do differently to prevent this from happening again. The start of the long road to returning to a more civil political climate likely begins with reinforcing the trust of Americans in the election, and mending the divide between the Democrats and Republicans.

 

UPDATE JAN. 8

 

On Jan. 6, Trump supporters attacked Capitol Hill. This is exactly the type of violence that was bound to happen, what with Trump’s recent actions. As of today, five people have died as a result of this conflict. One was Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died the night following the conflict from related injuries that have not been officially detailed. Another was a 35-year-old Air Force veteran, Ashli Babbit, who was shot by police.

“As protesters were forcing their way toward the House Chamber where Members of Congress were sheltering in place,” Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said in a statement the following day. “a sworn USCP employee discharged their service weapon, striking an adult female. Medical assistance was rendered immediately, and the female was transported to the hospital where she later succumbed to her injuries. She has been identified as Ashli Babbitt.”

It seems like Trump may have been at least somewhat responsible for this despicable attack, as during a speech just before the pro-Trump protest turned into an act of insurgence, he made yet more vague and thus dangerous statements that may have triggered his supporters to do what they did.

“And we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” Trump said. “And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.” Later, he also said: “When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules.”

In the aforementioned statement, Sund also spoke about his opinion on what occurred at Capitol Hill.

“The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol was unlike any I have ever experienced in my 30 years in law enforcement here in Washington, D.C.,” Sund said. “Maintaining public safety in an open environment – specifically for First Amendment activities – has long been a challenge. The USCP had a robust plan established to address anticipated First Amendment activities.  But make no mistake – these mass riots were not First Amendment activities; they were criminal riotous behavior.  The actions of the USCP officers were heroic given the situation they faced, and I continue to have tremendous respect in the professionalism and dedication of the women and men of the United States Capitol Police.”

Sund announced that he will resign on Jan. 16. The United States can only hope that this will be the last act of violence and attack on the nation before Biden is inaugurated, and the long process of bringing the citizens of the United States together can begin.