The Blaze
President Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote in
resounding fashion and is, as of today, the duly elected president of
the United States. Most other politicians would be content with this
result in a presidential election, but Trump is not most politicians. It
clearly sticks in his craw that he lost the popular vote by about 2
percent to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and so
he called for a “major investigation” on Wednesday morning into voter fraud that he claims cost him the popular vote.
Since the election, Trump has repeated the claim a number of times
that more than 3 million people voted illegally, thus costing him the
popular vote. Trump groused about voter fraud almost immediately
following his election victory, but he seems to have settled on the
number “3-5 million” in mid-December during a closed-door meeting on
Capitol Hill with Congressional Republicans. Since then, Trump and his
surrogates have repeated the claim often, which has repeatedly riled the
media, who claim that there is no evidence of voter fraud on such a
massive scale.
Trump repeated the claim on Monday during a meeting with lawmakers,
and White House Press Secretary was grilled by reporters about the
assertion during his press briefing. Spicer did not back off of the
claims, but also did not state that he personally believed them,
choosing
instead to defend the comments by saying, “the president does believe that.”
Trump doubled down Wednesday morning on Twitter:
Voting procedures and voting integrity are typically the purview of
state governments, but the Department of Justice does have some
oversight authority under the Voting Rights Act, and other federal
statutes. While it is unlikely that an investigation would uncover
millions of illegal votes in a single presidential election, it may
serve to bolster claims Republicans have long made about voter fraud and
corruption, particularly in large cities.
While both Republicans and Democrats agree that some level of voter
fraud exists, there is a wide partisan gap between voters of the two
parties in terms of how pervasive they believe voter fraud to be. For
instance, a
Gallup poll
taken in August revealed that a slight majority (52 percent) of
Republicans believe that voter fraud is a “major problem,” as compared
to only 26 percent of Democrats. A
Washington Post poll
taken in October showed that 60 percent of Republicans believe that
illegal immigrants and other ineligible people vote in “meaningful
amounts,” compared to less than 25 percent of Democrats and less than 40
percent of independents. Support for voter ID laws to combat voter
fraud is also strongly determined by party affiliation.
However, until now, valid, systematic studies about the prevalence of
voter fraud have been virtually non-existent. If the Department of
Justice follows through on Trump’s desire, that may be about to change.
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