Scare the Vote - The most devastating effect of Trump’s candidacy may be yet to come.
ALEX WAGNER 4:00 AM ET
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In the last 72 hours, Donald Trump has proven that he is willing to chart new territories of the paranoid and unpredictable: holding a pre-debate panel with women who have accused former president Bill Clinton of sexual indiscretion and assault, humiliating his running mate by breaking with him on foreign policy, and publicly sparring with Speaker Paul Ryan, the man who will be his most powerful ally in Congress—should Trump actually win the White House.
It is unclear which of these developments—the spectacle of Republicans trying to explain away or rationalize sexual assault, or the fracturing of the Republican Party itself—will dominate the remaining weeks of this campaign. But what may inflict the longest lasting damage on the American political system may be something else entirely. One sees suggestions of it in the recent and virulent strain of paranoia that has crept into Donald Trump’s campaign speech as of late: “You gotta watch your polling places!” he intoned last week. “I’m afraid the election’s going to be rigged.”
The mostly conservative narrative about election fraud is pervasive, though unfounded: voter fraud is at nearly zero percent in the United States. But it’s not exactly surprising that Trump’s increasing and alleged concern for electoral fairness comes at the precise moment that polling shows his support to be decreasing in several key states and his campaign finds itself in a tailspin. In fact, the two may be closely (and inversely) related: If the race doesn’t look like it’s going in the right direction, contest the results—a strategy adopted by spoilsports and despots alike.
Trump has thus far offered no evidence for his new concern beyond “you’ve been reading the same stories I’ve been reading,” (perhaps these stories include a debunked research paper on the Democratic primary) but he has nonetheless urged his supporters forward. On Trump’s website, those heeding the call can now sign up to be a “Trump Election Observer” with the explicit goal of helping the candidate “Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election!” (Never mind that the party trying hardest to tamper with American politics is Russia, not Rodham—and that thus far the Republican has been the beneficiary of said manipulations).
What, practically, does Trump mean? It’s not as if his supporters can follow unsuspecting voters into the booth, or conduct cyber-monitoring or check the hanging chads—but U.S. election law is remarkably permissive when it comes to so-called “election challengers.”
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/scare-the-vote/503387/?utm_source=poltw
