Trump laying groundwork to dispute election if he loses: CNN report

Donald Trump is re-using his 2020 playbook to baselessly claim the 2024 election is being stolen from him and is being joined by allies with big megaphones amplifying his falsehoods ahead of Election Day, reports CNN.

Trump has made repeated false claims that Democrats are cheating in the election, and he has twisted isolated problems with voting leading up to Election Day, all in an effort to prime his supporters to falsely believe the election is not legitimate if he loses.

This includes saying voting by noncitizens is a widespread problem. He has claimed there is no verification for overseas or military ballots. He has claimed election officials are using early voting to commit fraud. He has claimed that massive swaths of mail-in ballots are illegitimate, even as he has encouraged his supporters to use mail voting this time around.

Most importantly, Trump has claimed that the only way Vice President Kamala Harris can win the election is by cheating.

The claims are baseless.

"It's unfortunate that he sees his path back to the White House as denigrating a basic American institution like elections," said Ben Ginsberg, a CNN contributor and Republican campaign attorney. 

"If you're just starting to pay attention to this, the claims that you're hearing in 2024 about the election system not being reliable is extraordinarily similar to what he and his supporters were saying in 2020."

In 2020, Trump lost a close election, and then spent two months trying to overturn the result. In 2024, election officials are bracing for another firehose of misinformation about the result.

Election experts say that despite the viral and hyperbolic claims, the vast majority of voters will almost assuredly experience a swift and uneventful experience whenever they vote.

As early voting has gotten underway, many local and state officials are showing they intend to proactively knock down falsehoods about the election that spread like wildfire on social media.

Voter fraud is rare, but when it does happen, it is usually caught thanks to the layers of safeguards built into voting processes, according to nonpartisan election experts.

Musk's misinformation

Musk's 2022 acquisition of X, formerly known as Twitter, has only added fuel to the fire, as he has pushed out numerous conspiracies to his 200 million followers on the site, as well as at town halls to support Trump.

Social media has been used in past elections to fuel conspiracies, including by foreign actors in 2016. But X and other social media companies have pivoted away from efforts to combat falsehoods spread on their sites.

Intense focus on Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania could be the state where the 2024 campaign is decided, and it has become ground zero for both legal fights over voting rules – and the spread of misinformation.

Trump has already claimed without evidence that his opponents are cheating in the state, both on his social media and at campaign rallies. At a Tuesday rally, Trump claimed that the discovery of hundreds of suspected fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster County was evidence of cheating.

But that is hardly evidence of cheating — and in fact it shows the system worked to flag the applications, thanks to the checks in place to verify voters' personal information and signatures before any ballots are cast, said Kathy Boockvar, a former Pennsylvania secretary of state.

Manipulating early voting numbers

In 2020, Trump attacked early voting and mail-in voting, claiming they were used to cheat. His supporters, in response, largely voted on Election Day.

This time, Trump and the RNC have made a big push to use early and mail voting, even as Trump has continued to attack them.

Non-citizen voting

Trump and his Republican allies have ramped up litigation as well as their rhetoric ahead of Election Day over the threat of noncitizens voting – and Trump in particular has claimed without evidence that Democrats are trying to allow non-citizens to vote.

Experts say illegal voting by non-citizens is extremely rare, and when it does happen, it is usually caught quickly. A recent Georgia audit of the 8.2 million people on its rolls found just 20 registered noncitizens – only nine of whom had voted.

Challenging result

Election officials have been inundated with threats of violence since the 2020 election. They responded in 2024 by stepping up efforts to protect polling places and their workers on Election Day, including with bulletproof glass, wearable panic buttons and open lines of communication with local law enforcement.

Ballots and drop boxes have been targeted already. Authorities are investigating fires at ballot boxes in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver and Washington.

Once all the votes are cast, election officials and experts are preparing to try to stop a repeat of the 2020 election, where Trump sought out multiple avenues to try to overturn his election loss, culminating in his supporters rioting at the US Capitol.