Trump is already blaming election fraud. It will be much worse

Donald Trump isn’t waiting until Election Day to accuse Democrats of running a massive voter fraud operation in Pennsylvania, even as local election officials assure voters that existing systems to prevent voting fraud are working.

For days now, the former president has been stoking allegations of election fraud in a key swing state.

On Thursday, Trump said: “We caught them in a BIG SCAM in Pennsylvania. Must be declared and prosecuted, IMMEDIATELY!”

“This is a CRIMINAL VIOLATION OF THE LAW. STOP VOTER FRAUD! WATCH KAMALA’S NEW LAWYER. WE’RE ON THEM ALL THIS TIME! Who would have thought that our country is so CORRUPT? He wrote on Truth Social.

“Pennsylvania is cheating and getting caught on a scale rarely seen before,” Trump wrote in a separate Truth Social post on Wednesday, “TELL THE AUTHORITIES ABOUT THE FRAUD. Law enforcement must act NOW!”

It has long been clear that Trump plans to weaponize claims of election fraud to secure his victory in 2024, and it is not surprising that he has been spreading disinformation about the alleged scheme in Pennsylvania.

Lancaster County election officials announced last week that they had flagged two batches of voter registrations (totaling 2,600 applications) for additional review after identifying signs of potential registration fraud. On Monday, Trump falsely claimed that the registrations flagged for review were “fake ballots and forms written by the same person.”

Lancaster officials have not released the names of the election organizations that applied for registration and have not provided a final determination on how many of the applications on the registry were actually fraudulent. On Friday, District Attorney Heather Adams confirmed that the investigation had uncovered several hundred fraudulent registrations, representing approximately 60 percent of the total received. The remaining registrations were either valid or unconfirmed.

“We have confirmed violations of our criminal code, as well as our electoral code. We have every available detective working on this. We are all working hard to assess the validity of these applications in a timely manner,” she said.

Voter registrations are not ballots, and Lancaster County Commissioner and Board of Elections Chairman Ray D’Agostino, a Republican, told CNN on Thursday that the registration audit is evidence that existing protections against voter fraud are working.

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

“Since these registrations are considered acceptable—meaning they have been verified—we can then register these people,” D’Agostino added. “We want to make sure that every legal voter that comes into our office to register their vote has the opportunity to vote, we want to make sure that they can vote. However, they also want to make sure there is no fraudulent voter registration. That’s why we’re very careful here.”

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

However, Trump argues that government officials’ successful efforts to stop potentially fraudulent voting are evidence that the election is rigged against him. Little information was provided about the party affiliation of the groups collecting the statements, and no evidence was presented of actual voter fraud. However, this will not stop the former president, whose priority is winning rather than accuracy.

Trump and his allies have spent the last four years building a legal and electoral apparatus aimed at challenging the election results at every level of government. Already, as early voting begins across the country, election officials and officials are facing violence and harassment from Trump supporters and bracing for an intensifying conspiracy-driven backlash.

The Republican National Committee has already filed at least 130 election lawsuits in 26 states, with more expected as ballots are counted, according to an ABC News report Wednesday.

Swing states are once again warning that it could be days before they can finish counting their ballots, meaning the presidential race may not be called on Election Night. It is clear that during this time the former president and his allies will step on the gas, claiming fraud and election conspiracies. Trump pumps up the pumps in the final days before the vote.

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