WASHINGTON ― The top two Democrats in Congress are calling on their Republican counterparts “who know better” to push back on the election conspiracy theories being touted by GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and his top associates.
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) released a joint statement warning of the threat of Trump “refusing to accept the results of a fair election.”
“When a major party’s nominee riles up his supporters and repeats the lie that the election is ‘rigged,’ the failure of Speaker Ryan and Senator McConnell to affirm the fairness of our democratic process and condemn Donald Trump’s comments is complicity,” they wrote, referring to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Both men have endorsed Trump, although they’ve declined to talk about it in the past week, after the presidential nominee faced intense backlash from within the party over audio of him bragging about using his celebrity to sexually assault women and in the aftermath, allegations from a dozen women that he did just that.
Ryan said last week that he would no longer defend Trump and his office has commented on statements from Trump that the election could be rigged, despite Reid and Pelosi implying the contrary.
“Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in a statement on Saturday.
McConnell has been totally silent on Trump’s comments on a rigged election over the past several days. A spokesman for McConnell said Saturday that he would not be putting out a statement, and said the same on Monday.
Typically, the losing candidate in an election concedes to the winner. But Trump has been planting seeds for months that indicate that he may not go so easily if Hillary Clinton wins, by inflating the threat of voter fraud and, in the process, seeking to undermine the faith of millions of Americans in the electoral process.
Multiple studies have shown that actual instances of voter fraud are very rare, although nearly half of Americans think it happens very often or somewhat often, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released last month.
Trump’s comments appear to be having an effect: Thirty-seven percent of Trump supporters say they will reject the election’s legitimacy if he doesn’t win, while 23 percent of Clinton supporters say the same.
The issue is racially charged ― laws to crack down on voter fraud disproportionately affect minorities ― and Trump has told mostly white crowds to watch the polling places in “certain areas” on Election Day, implying vote rigging will happen in predominantly black and Hispanic areas.
Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R), has gotten on the “rigged election” bandwagon as well. On Monday, he warned of voter fraud and asked supporters to “respectfully” watch local polling places. He also said the media was conspiring against the Trump-Pence ticket in favor of Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee.
“I have no doubt the national media is trying to rig this election with their biased coverage in Hillary Clinton’s favor,” Pence said at a rally in Ohio.
Reid and Pelosi noted that there are issues that affect Election Day, such as long lines and broken voting machines, plus “the unprecedented factor of a hostile foreign government seeking to influence the outcome,” referring to allegations that the Russia is to blame for email hacking at the Democratic National Convention, as well as targeting individuals in the Clinton campaign.
But Reid and Pelosi said that the overall issue of faith in the democratic process “is bigger than any of us and bigger than this election.”
“This is about each of us doing our part to ensure the continued functioning of our democracy,” they said. “At some point, the good of the country must outweigh the instinct for political self-preservation.”
Sam Stein contributed reporting.
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