Fact check: 12 election lies Trump is using to set the stage to dispute a potential 2024 defeat
By Marshall Cohen and Daniel Dale, CNN
Washington (CNN) — Former President Donald Trump has escalated his long-running assault on the integrity of US elections as the 2024 presidential campaign enters its final stretch, using a new series of lies about ballots, vote-counting and the election process to lay the groundwork to challenge a potential defeat in November.
Nonpartisan democracy experts say they’re seeing many of the same warning signs that were blinking red before Election Day four years ago, when Trump flooded the zone with election lies and conspiracy theories that he amplified after losing to Joe Biden. His campaign of deception culminated in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“The threats have not abated; they have only increased,” said Lindsay Daniels, a senior director at the nonpartisan Democracy Fund, which works to strengthen US democracy. “We saw a lot of activity in 2020 around peddling false claims and frivolous lawsuits. We are already seeing signs now, stage-setting, that these things may be attempted again.”
Trump has made at least 12 distinct false claims over the last two months that raise baseless doubts about the validity of a potential victory by Vice President Kamala Harris. (Recent polls suggest the race is very close, and Trump could certainly still win.)
Trump, who wrongly insists the 2020 election was marred by massive fraud, said at a debate in June that he will accept the 2024 results regardless of who wins “if it’s a fair and legal and good election.” A majority of Trump supporters in battleground states like Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania now say they’re “not at all confident” or only “just a little” confident the results will be accurately tallied, according to recent CNN polling.
Trump has lied about the legitimacy of the vote counts in key states, the reliability of mail-in and overseas ballots, the size of Harris’ crowds at rallies, and more. Here’s a fact check of these and other claims.
False claim: Harris can only win through cheating
For months, starting long before any votes were cast in the 2024 general election, Trump repeatedly claimed that he already has enough votes to win and simply needs to ensure Democrats don’t cheat — insinuating that the only way he could possibly lose is through fraud.
Trump said at an August rally in Arizona: “The only way they can do anything is if they cheat like hell, and we’ve been victims of that. … We don’t need the votes, we just want to make sure that they don’t cheat.” He said at an August rally in North Carolina: “Our primary focus is not to get out the vote, it’s to make sure they don’t cheat, because we have all the votes you need.”
And in a Friday speech in Michigan, he said, “If I lose – I’ll tell you what, it’s possible. Because they cheat. That’s the only way we’re gonna lose, because they cheat.”
Facts First: This is nonsense. It’s obviously entirely possible that Harris could legitimately win the presidential election. While it’s also entirely possible that Trump wins legitimately, he could not possibly know for sure at the time of these comments that he already had “all the votes you need.”
False claim: It was ‘unconstitutional’ for the Democrats to replace Biden with Harris
Trump has repeatedly claimed the fairness of the 2024 election was tarnished because Biden dropped out of the race in July and Harris subsequently became the Democratic presidential nominee. In August, he called Harris’ ascension “an unconstitutional coup” and claimed Biden’s “Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him” by Harris.
Facts First: Trump’s claims are false. There was nothing unconstitutional or unlawful about Biden dropping out and Harris then being chosen by Democratic delegates as the party’s presidential nominee.
Biden quit the race before he had become the official Democratic nominee — the party makes the official nomination at its convention, which hadn’t happened yet. That means Biden dropped out before his name was placed on any state ballots.
CNN spoke in July with election authorities in 48 states, and not a single state authority, Republican or Democratic, said there were any legal issues with Harris getting on the general election ballot in place of Biden after she was formally nominated in August. She did not end up facing obstacles getting on the ballot in any state.
And while Biden certainly faced heavy Democratic pressure to leave the race after his poor performance in a debate against Trump in June, the decision to drop out was his alone; he could have kept running if he had chosen to do so. In other words, the candidate switch was the product of politics, not a forcible takeover.
False claim: Voting by non-citizens is a widespread problem in US elections
Trump and his allies have repeatedly raised concerns that the 2024 election will be tarnished by widespread voting by non-citizens and undocumented immigrants.
Republicans put this issue front and center in April, when Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled legislation to require all voters across the country to prove their citizenship. Efforts to pass the bill fizzled earlier in September amid disunity within the Republican caucus.
Further fanning the flames, billionaire Trump supporter Elon Musk has championed the conspiracy theory that Democrats are “importing voters” so they can create a “one-party state.” At the presidential debate earlier this month, Trump similarly accused Harris and Democrats of plotting to tip the election with illegal voters.
“Our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote,” Trump said. “They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote.”
Facts First: This specific Trump claim is false, and it’s also generally untrue to claim that voting by non-citizens is a widespread problem plaguing US elections. There is simply no evidence to back up that claim; it’s already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, and the various safeguards already in place are working effectively to stop it from happening en masse.
Both liberal and conservative think tanks have found only a tiny number of examples of non-citizens voting in elections where they are ineligible. The right-wing Heritage Foundation’s database of confirmed fraud cases lists less than 100 examples of non-citizens voting between 2002 and 2022, amid more than one billion lawfully cast ballots.
Further, nonpartisan experts on election law say such cases are almost always caught, thanks to layers of identity verification built into the registration and voting process.
Here is CNN’s previous fact-check debunking false claims about non-citizens voting widely in federal elections. And here is CNN’s breakdown of the underlying data in key states, showing how Republicans have massively inflated the size of this problem.
Trump has a long history of blaming electoral losses on undocumented immigrants. When he won the presidency in 2016, he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million — and to explain this away, he concocted the lie that “millions” of non-citizens had voted illegally.
False claim: The US Postal Service admitted it is ‘a poorly run mess’
In a social media post in mid-September, Trump claimed that the US Postal Service “admitted that it is a poorly run mess that is experiencing mail loss and delays at a level never seen before” and asked “how can we possibly be expected to allow or trust the U.S. Postal Service to run the 2024 Presidential Election?”
Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. There’s no evidence of the USPS ever admitting that it is a “poorly run mess.” Reacting to Trump’s comments at a September 19 press conference, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said, “My response is like my response to everyone who says we’re not prepared for the election — it is that they’re wrong.”
DeJoy became postmaster general in June 2020 after being selected by the bipartisan USPS Board of Governors, whose members were all appointed by Trump. DeJoy has touted the fact that in 2020, USPS delivered 99% of all mail ballots within one week.
The National Association of Secretaries of State, an umbrella organization that represents election officials from both parties, started raising alarm bells earlier this month with a sharply worded letter to DeJoy expressing “ongoing concerns” about the postal service’s “ability to deliver election mail in a timely and accurate manner.”
In response, DeJoy said the USPS was undertaking “extraordinary measures” to make sure all mail ballots are delivered on time, including designated lines at post offices for people with ballots, extra deliveries and collections by letter-carriers, “after-hours” drop-offs to election offices, and keeping processing facilities open longer.
Asked by CNN for proof of the supposed USPS admission that it was a “poorly run mess,” a Trump campaign spokeswoman responded with two news articles that were not evidence.
The articles were about the recent letter that the election officials sent to DeJoy — which didn’t originate from USPS and wasn’t an admission of anything.
Trump has continued raising unfounded doubts about mail-in voting, predicting in a recent interview with a right-wing radio host that USPS “will lose hundreds of thousands of ballots, maybe purposely.”
There is no evidence of the USPS ever losing ballots on this scale, though isolated mishaps have occurred and been remedied in past election cycles. Furthermore, most mail-in ballots are trackable these days, with tracking tools offered in almost every state.
False claim: There is no identity verification for overseas and military voters
Trump rolled out a new lie in late September about military and overseas voting.
For this tiny slice of the national electorate, voters can receive and submit ballots over email, because they are civilians who live abroad or servicemembers that are stationed overseas.
These are often called “UOCAVA voters,” from the acronym for the federal law that set up this system: the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which passed with bipartisan backing and was signed by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1986.
The deadline for states to send out UOCAVA ballots was September 21. In a social media post two days later, Trump baselessly accused Democrats of using this program “to CHEAT” in the election. “They are going to use UOCAVA to get ballots, a program that emails ballots overseas without any citizenship check or verification of identity, whatsoever,” Trump claimed.
Facts First: It’s not true that UOCAVA ballots are sent to people with no verification “whatsoever” of their identity. These special ballots are only sent to registered voters who request them, and states require people to verify their identity when registering.
David Becker, founder and executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, who regularly advises state and local election officials from both parties, blasted Trump on social media for “actively spreading false information about a bipartisan program.”
“Military and overseas ballots have gone out to registered, verified voters (as required by law) and they are secure,” Becker wrote the day after Trump’s claim. “I can tell you election officials of both parties take great pride in giving military and overseas voters a secure voice in our election, and it’s unfortunate to see a candidate spread lies about that process.”
Democrats Abroad, an arm of the Democratic Party, condemned Trump’s “absurd rant” in a statement to CNN, and said UOCAVA ballots “are only sent to people whose registration have been confirmed and validated by their local elections office.”
False claim: Harris spied on Trump’s campaign
Trump launched a new attack on Harris after news broke over the summer that Iranian hackers breached some Trump campaign email accounts and sent some of the stolen materials to journalists and Democratic campaign operatives.
“THE FBI CAUGHT IRAN SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN, AND GIVING ALL OF THE INFORMATION TO THE KAMALA HARRIS CAMPAIGN. THEREFORE SHE AND HER CAMPAIGN WERE ILLEGALLY SPYING ON ME,” Trump posted on Truth Social in mid-September.
Facts First: Trump’s claim that the Harris campaign spied on him is baseless. Iran did breach the Trump campaign, but there’s no evidence anyone from the Harris campaign was involved in the breach, solicited hacked materials, or weaponized these materials in any way. The Harris campaign condemned Iran’s “unwelcome and unacceptable” election interference.
The federal government announced in August that Iranian hackers successfully targeted the Trump campaign, and that they also attempted to breach the Biden-Harris campaigns.
US intelligence agencies later disclosed that the Iranian hackers sent unsolicited messages containing some of stolen Trump materials to some people associated with the Biden campaign. This included “a few individuals” who are currently involved with Harris’ campaign, her team told CNN.
Despite Trump’s claims, there is no evidence the Iranian hackers provided the Harris campaign with “all of the information” they stole. The US spy agencies said “an excerpt” of some stolen material was provided. More importantly, the US spy agencies said “there is currently no information indicating those recipients replied” to the hackers.
The Harris campaign’s condemnation of Iran and refusal to use the stolen material is a stark contrast to how Trump embraced Russia’s hack-and-leak against his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Even after the US announced that the leaks were part of a Kremlin plot to interfere with the US election, Trump and his campaign built a strategy to capitalize off Russia’s illegal actions and used the emails to attack Clinton on a near-daily basis.
False claim: California’s vote counts are dishonest
Trump has wrongly claimed for years that US vote counts are plagued by major fraud. In the last month, he has even declared that he would win Democratic-dominated California if there was an “honest” vote count. (California’s large population means that a candidate’s vote totals there have a significant influence on the national popular vote — which Trump has baselessly cast doubt on for years, even when he won the presidency in 2016.)
Trump said in September that “if I ran with an honest vote counter in California I would win California, but the votes are not counted honestly.” In late August, he said, “If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California, okay?”
Facts First: This is fiction. The votes are counted honestly in California, as they are in every other state. Trump loses California because it is an overwhelmingly Democratic state that no Republican presidential candidate has carried since 1988.
Trump lost the state in 2020, fair and square, by more 5 million votes and more than 29 percentage points. It’s ridiculous to suggest that fraudulent vote-counting was responsible for a margin that large.
Like several other states, California conducts post-election audits to verify the accuracy of the vote count. These audits use mathematical models and statistics to access the accuracy of the overall tally based on random samples of ballots.
False claim: Election officials use early voting to commit fraud
Trump has encouraged his supporters this year to make use of early voting. But at a rally in Pennsylvania last week, he suggested that the lag time between when an early ballot is cast and Election Day is used by nefarious actors to fraudulently manipulate the count.
“Now we have this stupid stuff where you can vote 45 days early. I wonder what the hell happens during that 45 — ‘Let’s move the … see these votes, we’ve got about a million votes in there, let’s move them, we’re fixing the air conditioner in the room,’ right? No, it’s terrible. What happened the last time was disgraceful, including right here. But we’re not going to let it happen again,” Trump said.
Facts First: This is another phony narrative. There is no indication that there was any counting fraud involving early ballots in 2020, in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. Early ballots are securely stored in election offices until they are counted. People who interfere with ballots during this period are subject to prosecution.
False claim: Trump won Minnesota in 2020
Trump declared in March and May that he won Minnesota in the 2020 election.
At a Minnesota rally in July, he claimed, “If they don’t cheat, we win this state easily, Okay? They cheat.” He added, “They’re the most crooked. They cheat. They cheated in the last election, and they’re going to cheat in this election, but we’re going to get them.”
Facts First: Trump’s claims are false.
He lost Minnesota by more than 7 percentage points in the 2020 election, fair and square, and he can certainly lose the state legitimately in 2024.
The state hasn’t chosen a Republican for president since 1972, and Trump has consistently trailed in opinion polls against Harris — whose running mate is the sitting Minnesota governor, Tim Walz.
False claim: A large percentage of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania are fraudulent
Pennsylvania is one of the most important swing states in the 2024 election. Trump claimed in a social media post in September that an “election expert” interviewed by right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson had suggested a large percentage of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania are fraudulent.
“An interview by Tucker Carlson of an election expert indicates that 20% of the Mail-In Ballots in Pennsylvania are fraudulent. Here we go again! Where is the U.S. Attorney General and FBI to INVESTIGATE? Where is the Pennsylvania Republican Party? We will WIN Pennsylvania by a lot, unless the Dems are allowed to CHEAT,” he wrote.
Facts First: There is no valid basis for the claim that 20% of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania — or any other state — are fraudulent. This claim appears to be based on a flawed 2023 poll by a right-wing pollster, not the discovery of any actual problems with ballots in Pennsylvania or anywhere else from 2020, 2022 or this year.
The 2020 election was fair and secure in Pennsylvania, as it was in the rest of the country, according to officials from both parties who affirmed the results. There was a tiny smattering of voter fraud in the state in 2020 —– some of it committed by Trump supporters — but not even close to enough to have affected the outcome.
Pennsylvania’s Department of State said in a September email to CNN: “Voting by mail is safe and secure, and no evidence exists of widespread mail voting fraud in Pennsylvania.
Mail ballot fraud has been proven to be exceptionally rare. Claims of systemic voter fraud are devoid of any supporting evidence and have consistently been rejected by judges, government agencies, and election experts across the political spectrum.”
So what was Trump referring to?
Trump and his campaign didn’t specify what interview he was talking about. But in April, Carlson interviewed someone who spoke of a 2023 poll conducted by a right-wing firm, Rasmussen Reports, that has itself promoted false election claims. Among likely voters in that poll who said they had been absentee or mail-in voters in 2020, 21% claimed to have filled out a ballot for a friend or family member and 17% claimed they had voted in a state where they were no longer a permanent resident.
There are lots of reasons not to treat this poll as evidence of mass fraud in Pennsylvania.
First, this was a national poll, not a Pennsylvania poll. Second, the pollster is viewed skeptically by many polling experts. Third, people making claims to a pollster about their past behavior does not prove that they actually did what they said.
Fourth, as FactCheck.org pointed out earlier this month, it’s legal to fill out a ballot for a voter with disabilities who has asked for the assistance — so someone saying they filled out someone else’s ballot isn’t necessarily a confession of fraud. Fifth, as FactCheck.org also noted, the wording of the residency question was ambiguous enough that people could have thought it was asking about legal behavior — such as having voted in 2020 in a different state from the one they currently lived in three years later.
False claim: Harris fabricated an image to inflate her crowd size
Since 2020, various Trump supporters have claimed that Biden’s unimpressive crowd sizes are proof that Biden’s 2020 vote total, about 81 million, was fraudulently inflated. (Trump earned about 74 million votes in 2020.)
In August, Trump launched an attack on Harris’ crowd sizes. He claimed on social media that Harris should be disqualified from the race because, he claimed, she had faked an image of a large crowd at her rally at a Michigan airport. He wrote: “There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!”
He also wrote, “This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING – And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”
Facts First: Trump’s claims are false. Harris did not create a fake image of the Michigan crowd using artificial intelligence or anything else. As genuine photos and videos showed, and reporters on scene confirmed, she had a real crowd of thousands of people at the airport event.
The false claim that the Harris campaign was pushing fake images of this Michigan crowd had been circulated by some far-right influencers before Trump adopted it.
Asked by CNN in August why he made the false claim, Trump said he “can’t say what was there, who was there” and could only speak about his own large crowds. But he made another false claim about Harris’ crowds at the presidential debate against Harris in September, wrongly saying, “People don’t go to her rallies.”
False claim: Biden or Harris orchestrated Trump’s legal cases
Trump has repeatedly claimed this year that “all” of the legal cases against him, including local and state cases, were all orchestrated by Biden for the purpose of “election interference,” to help Democrats win the election.
In July, when Biden dropped out of the race and Harris became the Democratic candidate, Trump began claiming she was the one behind the cases.
Facts First: These claims are false. There is no evidence that Biden personally orchestrated any of these cases. Trump never presented any evidence for that claim, let alone for suddenly making the vice president the target of the claim after months of directing it at the president.
There is no sign that either Biden or Harris had any role in bringing charges against Trump in Manhattan, New York (where Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records) or Fulton County, Georgia (where an election subversion case against Trump is on hold over a battle about whether the district attorney should be disqualified). Those prosecutions have been led by elected local prosecutors, both Democrats, who do not even report to the federal government.
Trump’s two federal criminal cases, one about election subversion and one about Trump’s retention of classified documents after his presidency, were brought by a special counsel, Jack Smith. A judge dismissed the classified documents case in July, but Smith is appealing.
Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, but that is far from proof that Biden orchestrated the prosecutions – and certainly not proof that Harris did. Garland has said he would resign if Biden ever asked him to take action against Trump, but expressed confidence that Biden would never put him in that position.
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