Trump regime throwing doubt on integrity of US elections

The Guardian - A series of moves by Donald Trump’s administration to sow doubt in the integrity of US elections have intensified concern among voting experts – and sparked hope among election deniers – that it could declare a national emergency.

The White House and US federal agencies have released a string of documents this summer – including disputed analyses of alleged voting by noncitzens and historical intelligence memos – stoking expectations that the US president could move to exert greater control over November’s US midterm elections.

Trump used a primetime television address in July to claim – again – that US elections were vulnerable to foreign manipulation, and repeat the lie that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was stolen.

Trump’s speech prompted Steve Bannon, his former political strategist, to predict the US president will declare a state of emergency on national security grounds to “protect” elections.

“Take your No 2 pencil out,” Bannon, a rightwing commentator, said on his War Room video podcast on 29 July. “It’s coming. It’s coming. Just block the last week of August out. It’s coming.”

While Trump and his allies could try to use a national emergency declaration to delegitimize results of November’s results, experts say such a declaration would not supersede the constitutional restrictions on executive power on election administration. No president has ever attempted to invoke an emergency to assert control over voting.

Asked earlier this month by Wayne Allyn Root, a rightwing broadcaster, if he would “declare a national security emergency for elections”, Trump notably did not shoot down the idea.

“Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK?” the president told Real America’s Voice, a rightwing cable channel. “I’ll leave it at that.”

MS NOW - In July, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed that the Trump administration had found nearly 16,000 “potential” noncitizens registered to vote in Nevada, write Vaughn Hillyard and Laura Barrón-López. But senior officials told election administrators last week that they had identified only 185 potential noncitizens on the voter rolls so far, according to emails and a video recording obtained by MS NOW. Election administrators in multiple states have said they are concerned that the Trump administration will use claims about noncitizen voters to interfere with the midterms. Read more.