How Trump has made election lies a key feature of his campaign

With just over 60 days to go until Election Day, former President Trump is again casting doubt on the legitimacy of the process. Lies about the 2020 election have been a key feature of Trump’s third campaign for the presidency. White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López takes a closer look with David Becker of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.
Amna Nawaz:
We have just over 60 days to go until Election Day. Former President Donald Trump is again casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election process.
Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, takes a closer look.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Lies about the 2020 election have been a key feature of Donald Trump’s third campaign for the presidency.
In an interview with FOX over the weekend, Trump defended his efforts to overturn the 2020 results.
Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: Who ever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it? You get indicted, and your poll numbers go up.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Another feature of Trump’s campaign, sowing distrust about the 2024 election.
Donald Trump:
It’s one thing I taught people. They used to think that the elections were honest and the borders were sealed. Now they know the borders are an open sieve that’s destroying our country and the elections are dishonest as hell.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Joining me now to discuss this is David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.
David, thank you so much for joining me.
David Becker, Executive Director, Center for Election Innovation and Research: Thanks for having me.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
In that recent podcast interview with a former aide of his, Donald Trump said that — quote — “mail voting by its nature cannot be honest.” He also attacked early voting, saying, where are these votes being stored?
What is your response to all of these claims?
David Becker:
I mean, it shows you the difficulty that the RNC and his campaign are having with his message discipline on this.
The RNC and his campaign are trying to encourage his voters to vote as conveniently as possible by mail or early, which all — many voters in this country have opportunity to do; 97 percent of all voters have access to early voting and 36 states plus D.C. offer no-excuse mail voting.
Mail voting, early voting, absolutely secure. There are strict chains of custody that go around the machines and with physical security and cybersecurity. So people can be absolutely confident about those ballots being cast. In addition, it should be noted Donald Trump himself won a majority of states with significant mail voting in 2016, and we didn’t hear anything about mail voting after that.
Mail voting has been around since before the civil war.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Trump and his allies have also claimed, without evidence, that noncitizens are voting in large numbers, are going to vote in large numbers in November, and Trump has urged Republicans in the House to shut down the government — quote — “in a heartbeat” if they don’t get their bill that requires proof of citizenship to vote, even though it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote.
What’s the function of claiming that noncitizens are voting in massive numbers? Why do it?
David Becker:
Well, they’re not trying to change policy, I don’t think.
If they really thought this was a significant problem, if they had the evidence to suggest that — and there isn’t evidence. Even Trump’s own allies in states like Georgia, Texas and other places have looked for large amounts of noncitizens registered or voting and they just can’t find them.
It’s because they don’t exist. It doesn’t happen very often. I think what this is doing is setting the stage for claims an election was stolen afterwards. If they really wanted to change the law, they would have done this in 2023 or 2021 or even 2017, when Donald Trump was the president of the United States.
They could have changed the law and done whatever they wanted with regard to noncitizen voting, mail voting, anything else. The reason this is coming up two months before the presidential election is because they know they’re not going to change the policy in advance of the election, but they do want to be able to call up these arguments after the election to his sincerely disappointed supporters if he loses, and then perhaps incite anger and division and donations and even violence in the post-election period.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
As you noted, claims of noncitizens voting is a pretext. Congress did pass legislation shortly after January, the insurrection, making it harder to object to certification in a presidential election.
David Becker:
Right.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
But what are the mechanisms, are there any for Donald Trump to overturn the 2024 election results?
David Becker:
So if he loses — and it’s possible he could win legitimately — but, if he loses, he’s almost certainly going to try. I think we can expect that, regardless of what happens during the election, that, on election night, he’s going to claim victory regardless of margins.
It’s likely he’s going to spread some of these lies about noncitizen voting, about mail voting not being secure, about voting machines being rigged, about dead Venezuelan dictators and bamboo ballots and Italian satellites. We should expect that.
And what they will — what I think we will see them do is, if he loses, they will start organizing activists that they have organized over the course of the past four years in counties all over the country as they’re counting ballots, as they’re getting ready to certify the election.
We have seen attempts to do this at the county level in many states, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Michigan and others by usually extremists on the right-wing, who are trying to slow down or stop state certification.
However, I will say that, even with efforts we’re seeing in Georgia at the statewide level, even with efforts we’re seeing at the countywide level, I think these efforts will fail. I think this is a desperate and somewhat pathetic strategy by a losing candidate to try to make it seem as if there’s a legal path to stealing the election from the rightful winner.
But there are so many checks and balances in place. With state certification, there are legal actions that can be brought and have been brought by states in the past. There is the ascertainment of electors, which happens on December 11. That’s done by the governors of the states. And the governors have acted really in a principled way in the past. I expect them to do the same.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Lies about the 2020 election being rigged are a hallmark of Trump’s speeches, of his interviews throughout this year, throughout his campaign.
But he’s also repeatedly said that 2024 is going to be rigged, that Democrats are rigging it. What are the ramifications of that constant effort to stoke distrust?
David Becker:
For years now, we have seen public servants all over the country who’ve been just exhausted by constant abuse and attacks, threats against themselves and their family.
These are the people who run elections. And it’s happening at least as much, if not more so, in deeply red areas of our country, in areas that have voted very heavily for Trump, where the professional election officials find themselves the targets of attacks, sometimes from their own county boards, sometimes from their own county councils, sometimes from their own county law enforcement, who have ingested a constant toxic diet of lies about the 2020 election.
It is corrosive to our entire democracy. Our adversaries overseas, Russia, Iran, China, are actively seeking to get us all to doubt our democracy, to doubt that democracy can work for us, and to doubt the election system that decides who leads us.
And now we have domestic actors over the last several years who intentionally or unintentionally are doing their work for them. It’s going to take decades, regardless of the outcome of this election, to fix that.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
David Becker, thank you for your time.
David Becker:
Thanks.