Trump sharpens 'rigged' election
allegations disputed by Republican lawyers
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[October 18, 2016]
By Emily Stephenson and Alana Wise
GREEN BAY, Wis./WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday cited studies he
said showed rampant voter fraud, saying the Nov. 8 election was "rigged"
against him even as Republican lawyers called his allegations unfounded.
Trump, a New York businessman making his first run for public office,
has sought to raise fears of a flawed election as he has fallen in
opinion polls against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
"They even want to try to rig the election at the polling place," Trump
told a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin. "So many cities are corrupt and
voter fraud is very, very common."
Trump cited Pew Trusts research from 2012 that called for updates to the
voter registration system because about 24 million registrations were
inaccurate. (http://bit.ly/1HN4uTF)
He also referred to a 2014 article by two political scientists in the
Washington Post that said non-citizens who voted could have accounted
for Democratic victories in a few close elections in 2008, although the
authors acknowledged the sample size of their study was small.
(http://wapo.st/1pX17Bf)
Numerous studies have shown that voter fraud in U.S. elections is very
rare.
Republican campaign lawyer Chris Ashby said Trump's charges could foment
unrest and were “unfounded” and “dangerous.”
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Oct/18/images/ads/current/pest-control-SDA-Termites-2015.png)
"When you say an election is rigged, you’re telling voters, your
supporters, their votes do not matter,” Ashby said in an interview. "I
think some of Donald Trump’s comments could cause unrest at the polls."
Some Republicans have urged Trump to drop the assertions. Early voting
and voting by mail have already begun in many states.
Mark Braden, partner at Baker and Hostetler and former chief counsel for
the Republican National Committee, said that any sort of election
rigging at the national level “just is impossible,” citing the various
systems in place that would make such an endeavor complicated and
unfeasible.
“Our system is principally a system based upon each side watching the
other side,” Braden said in an interview. “Our system is dependent on
local volunteer participation. Our system has worked very well because
we have people who get involved in the process and perform these
functions.”
Trump also pounced on the release on Monday of Federal Bureau of
Investigation documents that he alleged showed "felony corruption."
The documents cited an FBI official as saying a senior State Department
official sought to pressure the bureau in 2015 to drop its insistence
that an email from Clinton's private server contained classified
information..
Clinton's decision to use a private server while secretary of state from
2009 to 2013 has drawn criticism that she was careless with national
security.
"This is worse than Watergate, what's going on with this," said Trump.
He also proposed a package of ethics reforms, saying that if elected he
would ban his administration officials from lobbying government for five
years after leaving government.
'NOT GOING TO BE RIGGED'
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Trump's assault on the voting
system was an act of desperation.
"He knows he's losing and is trying to blame that on the system. This is
what losers do," Mook told reporters.
The RealClearPolitics average of national opinion polls shows Clinton
currently leading Trump by 7.1 percentage points, at 46 percent to 38.9
percent.
The country's top elected Republican, House of Representatives Speaker
Paul Ryan, tried to counter Trump's message about election fraud.
Spokeswoman AshLee Strong said Ryan "is fully confident the states will
carry out this election with integrity."
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![](../images/101816pics/news_v35.jpg)
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a campaign rally
in Green Bay, Wisconsin, U.S. October 17, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan
Ernst
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Oct/18/images/ads/current/mb_heating_quarter_FHI_2016.png)
In the traditionally hard-fought state of Ohio, the top elections
official, a Republican, said concerns about widespread voter fraud
were simply not justified.
"I can reassure Donald Trump: I am in charge of elections in Ohio
and they're not going to be rigged, I'll make sure of that," Ohio
Secretary of State Jon Husted told CNN.
In a report titled "The Truth About Voter Fraud," the Brennan Center
for Justice at New York University School of Law cited voter fraud
incident rates between 0.00004 percent and 0.0009 percent.
An August study by the Washington Post found 31 credible cases of
impersonation fraud out of more than 1 billion votes cast in
elections from 2000 to 2014. Arizona State University studies in
2012 and 2016 found similarly low rates.
A number of Republican-led states, citing the need to prevent voter
fraud, have passed laws with stricter ID requirements. But several
have been struck down by courts that ruled they were designed to
hinder minority voting.
MELANIA TRUMP SPEAKS OUT
Trump's campaign has been shaken since the release 10 days ago of a
2005 tape showing him lewdly bragging about kissing and touching
women without their permission. A series of women have since come
forward with allegations about such behavior on his part, but he has
denied those accusations.
"They want to put nice sexy headlines up even though nothing
happened," Trump said, blaming the media for trying to "poison the
minds of the voters."
On Monday, the allegations were in the headlines again after Trump's
wife, Melania Trump, spoke publicly for the first time about the
"Access Hollywood" tape.
A former model who has mainly stayed off the campaign trail, Trump
told CNN she was surprised by her husband's language and said she
thought he had been "egged on" to "say dirty and bad stuff," calling
it "boy talk."
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Oct/18/images/ads/current/brickey_lda_061314.png)
Melania Trump told CNN that the allegations of unwanted touching
from women were "all organized from the opposition" and said media
did not "check the background of these women."
In a separate interview with Fox News Channel, she said she had
forgiven her husband for the comments in the tape.
"Those words, they were offensive to me and they were inappropriate.
And he apologized to me," Melania Trump said in an excerpt released
by Fox News Channel.
"I accept his apology. And we are moving on," she said.
(Additional reporting by Luciana Lopez and Jonathan Allen in New
York, and Susan Heavey, Susan Cornwell and Eric Walsh in Washington;
Writing by Doina Chiacu and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Leslie Adler
and Peter Cooney)
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