Republican candidate Donald Trump said on Monday he expected widespread voter fraud in the 8 Nov US presidential election, ramping up his warning of a rigged election without providing any evidence and despite numerous studies that show the electoral system is sound.
Trump has tried to whip up fears of a flawed election as he has fallen back in opinion polls against Democrat Hillary Clinton. He has also strongly denied allegations from multiple women that he sexually assaulted or otherwise behaved inappropriately with them.
Trump Questions Legitimacy of Election System
Trump, a New York businessman making his first run for public office, has worried a number of Republicans over his allegations of election fraud. Some of them have urged Trump to show proof publicly or drop the assertions. Early voting and voting by mail have already begun in many states.
While Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, and his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, have tried to reshape the candidate’s comments as being aimed at an unfair news media, Trump’s own words have targeted the legitimacy of the election system.
Even after Pence said in a televised interview on Sunday that Trump would accept the results of next month’s election, Trump tweeted:
Trump has tried to portray Clinton, a former US senator and secretary of state, as a corrupt lifelong politician who is vested in preserving the status quo.
His campaign pounced on the release Monday of FBI documents that cited an FBI official as saying a senior State Department official sought to pressure the bureau in 2015 to drop its insistence that an email from Clinton's private server contained classified information.
Clinton’s decision to use a private server while secretary of state from 2009-13 has drawn criticism that she was careless with national security.
Republicans Counter Fraud Charges
The country’s top elected Republican, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, has tried to counter Trump's message about election fraud. Spokeswoman AshLee Strong said on Monday that Ryan “is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity.”
Ryan last week distanced himself from Trump, saying he was going to focus his election campaign efforts on trying to preserve the Republican majorities in Congress. Since then, Trump has repeatedly sent out remarks via Twitter slamming Ryan.
“Not Rigged”
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Trump's assault on the voting system was an act of desperation.
“He knows he’s losing and is trying to blame that on the system. This is what losers do,” Mook told reporters. “It’s not true. The system is not rigged.”
Read The Quint’s full coverage of the US Elections 2016 here.
(The article has been published in an arrangement with Reuters and has been cut for length.)
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