Trump Is Already Crying Election Fraud. It’s Going to Get a Lot Worse

Donald Trump isn’t waiting until Election Day to accuse Democrats of running a large-scale voter fraud operation in Pennsylvania, despite local election officials assuring voters that the systems in place to prevent fraudulent voting are working. 

For days now, the former president has been stoking claims of electoral fraud in the key swing state. 

On Thursday, Trump claimed that “We caught them CHEATING BIG in Pennsylvania. Must announce and PROSECUTE, NOW!” 

“This is a CRIMINAL VIOLATION OF THE LAW. STOP VOTER FRAUD! CHECK OUT KAMALA’S NEW SLEAZEBAG LAWYER. WE ARE ON THEM ALL THIS TIME! Who would have ever thought that our Country is so CORRUPT?” He wrote on Truth Social.

“Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before, Trump wrote in a separate Truth Social post on Wednesday “REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!” 

It’s long been clear that Trump has been planning to weaponize claims of election fraud in order to ensure his victory in 2024, and it’s no surprise that he is spreading disinformation regarding an alleged scheme in Pennsylvania. 

Last week, election officials in Lancaster County announced that they had flagged two batches of voter registrations — totaling 2,600 applications — for extra review after identifying signs of potential registration fraud. On Monday, Trump falsely claimed that the registrations flagged for review were “Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person.” 

Lancaster officials have not released the names of the canvassing organizations that submitted the registration, or provided a final determination on how many applications in the dockets were actually fraudulent. On Friday, District Attorney Heather Adams confirmed that the investigation had identified several hundred fraudulent registrations, approximately 60 percent of the total received. Other registrations were valid or unconfirmable. 
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“We have confirmed violations of our crimes code as well as our elections code. We have all available detectives working on this. We are all hands on deck so that we can properly assess the validity of these applications in a timely manner,” she said. 

Voter registrations are not ballots, and on Thursday Lancaster County Commissioner and Board of Elections Chairman Ray D’Agostino, a Republican, told CNN that the review of the registrations was evidence that safeguards in place to protect against voter fraud work. 

“This was detected, it was stopped, and the investigation is ongoing,” he said, adding that the “people who are legally able to vote will be able to vote.” 

“As those registrations are deemed to be acceptable — that means that they’ve been able to be verified — we are able to then get those people registered,” D’Agostino added. “We want to make sure every legal voter is able to vote, that has come in to our office to register the vote, we want to make sure that they are able to vote. They also want to make sure, though, that no fraudulent voter registrations are put through. So that’s why we’re being very deliberative here.” 

D’Agostino also clarified that the registrations submitted had “had nothing to do” with Pennsylvania’s early voting system, and that the applications were not attached to existing ballots. 

Regardless, Trump is running with the claim that successful efforts by state officials to stop potentially fraudulent voting are evidence that the election is rigged against him. Little information has been provided regarding the partisan affiliation of the groups who collected the applications and no evidence of actually fraudulent voting has been presented. That, however, won’t stop the former president, whose priority is victory — not accuracy. 
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Trump and his allies have spent the last four years building a legal and electoral apparatus aimed at challenging election results at all levels of the government. Already, as early voting begins across the country, election officials and poll workers are facing violence and harassment from Trump supporters, and are bracing for the onslaught of conspiracy fueled backlash to worsen. 
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According to a Wednesday report from ABC News, the Republican National Committee has already filed at least 130 election lawsuits across 26 states, and more are expected as ballots are counted.

Swing states are once again warning that it may take days before they are able to finish counting their ballots, meaning the presidential race may not be called on the night of the election. In the intervening time it is a certainty that the former president and his allies will hit the gas on their claims of fraud and electoral conspiracies. Trump is priming the pumps in the final days before the vote.