Even after winning the presidency, President-elect Donald Trump complained that he won the Electoral College, but lost the popular vote because of “millions of people who voted illegally.” Now, some longtime Republicans lawmakers are supporting that allegation.
There is no evidence that significant voter fraud took place on Election Day.
On Wednesday, eight-term Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) suggested that voter fraud took place in his state. When Pittsburgh conservative radio personality Rose Tennent asked Murphy in a radio interview for his thoughts on the Green Party-led and Democratic Party-supported recount efforts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and his home state, Murphy suggested that people who voted included those “who are not really registered, who are not really residents or citizens.”
MURPHY: I saw massive lines of people who couldn’t wait to vote in the counties I represented. It’s pretty clear what they wanted. And certainly there was a lot of concerns for machines that people who voted for Trump that switched to Hillary, so we’ll see if those things come out as well. I would like to see us really review the states for voter fraud. The example that some people say is, ‘well because no one has been convicted, therefore it doesn’t exist.’ I just don’t follow that. We have to look at the possibility that people who are not really registered, who are not really residents or citizens — got a chance to vote, etc, so if that shakes out of this, that’s fine.
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To Murphy’s point, a local CBS affiliate reported that some people in Clinton Township, PA had issues with two of eight automated voting machines who voted for Trump only to see their vote switch to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. But election officials promptly sent experts to recalibrate the machines and voters were sent to another polling place nearby to vote on emergency ballots. The Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman Rob Gleason later said that he didn’t find the situation “nefarious.”
As in Clinton Township, there are scattered anomalies across the country with older machines that may need to be recalibrated after they’re transferred to the polling place. But there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud on the scale of millions of people — including undocumented immigrants — who illegally voted.
Yet Trump hasn’t let up on his unsubstantiated allegation that “serious voter fraud” took place, pointing to states like Virginia, California, and New Hampshire.
That claim firmly resonates with his supporters. In an interview with CNN’s New Day anchor Alisyn Camerota on Thursday, a Trump supporter claimed that three million “illegals,” or undocumented immigrants, voted in California.
Camerota was dubious. But the supporter insisted that voter fraud took place in Nashua, NH. (New Hampshire officials dispute the claim.) Pressed for evidence that President Obama encouraged this behavior, she pointed to a heavily-edited viral video that purportedly showed Obama encouraging undocumented immigrants to commit voter fraud. (He did not.)
Trump supporter falsely argues that millions of people voted illegally with no evidence on CNN's @NewDay https://t.co/6lqMSTJNuj
— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) December 1, 2016
Voter fraud did not take place on a large scale in Murphy’s home state on Election Day. But voter intimidation did. According to NBC News, there were widespread reports of polling places asking for voter ID. Election Protection, a coalition of nonpartisan local, state, and national partners which collect reports about voter suppression, received thousands of calls about voting issues in Pennsylvania alone. And in August, Trump told supporters to “watch” polling places in Pennsylvania, suggesting that they “go down in certain areas and watch and study. Make sure people don’t come in and vote five times.”