Trump pre-emptively alleges voting fraud

What happened

President Trump escalated his attacks on the midterms voting process in several states recently, as his administration appeared to be setting the stage to cast doubt on the validity of widely anticipated Democratic wins. The Justice Department sued to block Alaskan election officials from declaring a winner in the Senate race unless it was Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, arguing that voters would be confused by the presence of a candidate with a nearly identical name, Dan J. Sullivan. Alaska uses a ranked-choice voting system, and Republicans argued the other Sullivan was planted to siphon votes away from the incumbent in favor of Democrat Mary Peltola. Alaska’s Supreme Court already permitted both Sullivans to remain on the ballot. Trump took personal credit for bringing the suit, telling reporters, “I’m the one who said do it.”

Meanwhile, a judicial panel in California rejected a last-ditch request from the Trump administration to set aside as many as 20,000 mail-in ballots from people it claims could be noncitizens. The panel noted that the timing would interfere with California’s ability to administer elections. The Justice Department also sent a letter demanding the segregation of any ballots submitted by 400 more alleged noncitizens in Washington, one of nine states where the Department of Homeland Security has recently conducted door-to-door searches for illegal voters. District Judge Araceli Martínez- Olguín blocked that effort as well, noting inaccuracies in the Justice Department’s list and the risk of giving U.S. citizens “ objectively reasonable” fears of prosecution.

What the columnists said

The Alaska lawsuit is “genuinely bizarre,” said Harry Litman in The New Republic. The Constitution clearly grants states the power to administer elections. The federal government “has no role” in trying to pre-emptively minimize confusion over “something that hasn’t happened and may never happen.” It’s “positively Looney Tunes.” The presence of same-named candidates may be a “pretty crafty” Democratic ploy, but it’s perfectly legal. Yet now, if Peltola wins, “Team Trump will have its talking point ready.

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Trump’s administration has also been making “near-daily announcements” about people charged with noncitizen voting, said Kyle Cheney and Myah Ward in Politico, but the claims of sweeping voter fraud are nonsense. When Los Angeles County officials reviewed a 200-name sample of the 20,000 alleged illegal voters, they found 112 had not been sent ballots, more than 70% never voted in California, and nearly 40% of those with listed birthplaces were born in the U.S. Of course, this may not be about catching criminals, but rather “stoking the fire of distrust.”

These efforts might fizzle if the Democrats “win big,” said Stephen Collinson in CNN.com. But if Republicans lose by tight margins, we could see weeks-long battles over certifying the results. And there’s no Bill Barr equivalent “to debunk potential claims of fraud.” Trump said recently he would accept the results “if they are honest elections.” That ominous caveat is now “impossible to ignore.”