MAGA’s election cheating allegations already on the rise: Charges and theories

With the US election less than a week away, public scrutiny is focussed on the rhetoric already being pushed by Donald Trump and his supporters about the potential results of the 2024 cycle. According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll published earlier this year, a major faction of Americans do not believe that the GOP presidential candidate will accept the election result if he loses and possibly recreate the infamous historical moment that launched violence at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. In addition to Trump’s perceived negative response to his potential defeat, the former president’s supporters are also not expected to respond favourably to the outcome. Only 29% of the respondents said they believed Trump would accept the results even if he lost, and the remaining significant two-thirds of voters wouldn’t.
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The ex-POTUS’ “cheating” claims started as early as April. While addressing the crowd at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach earlier this year, Trump pushed a number of unfounded assertions that echoed those made during the 2020 presidential campaign. The “Border 9/11 Gala” is also where he reiterated the “Big Lie” from 2020, alleging that Biden’s campaign “took advantage of COVID last time” to win. “We’re going to bring our country back. We’re going to get out there. We’re going to vote. We’re going to watch the cheating very carefully,” he said during the April event.
“I’ll tell you what, if it’s just by the vote, they could cancel that election. We win that election right now,” he added. Further dipping his toes into unsupported claims, he said, “We have so many more votes than they do, but we have to be very vigilant. We have to be very careful.”
Although it is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, Trump and his supporters, including high-profile MAGA officials like Elon Musk, boarded this conspiracy theory’s train in the months leading up to the election. House Speaker Mike Johnson previously said without evidence, “We all know – intuitively – that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that is easily provable.”
Furthermore, Trump falsely said during his presidential debate with Kamala Harris that Democrats were bringing immigrants to the US to earn illegal votes. “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, and that’s why they’re allowing them into our country,” the GOP nominee alleged.
The Republican National Committee even filed lawsuits in some states, implying that voter rolls were not regulated and could be composed of noncitizens.
According to The Guardian, Gateway Pundit, a site infamous for its election misinformation reporting, along with Trump and rightwing media, had also pushed cheating claims, accusing the Democratic Party of gaining votes through overseas US citizens. On September 23, Trump took to his Truth Social account to level heavy allegations against the rival political party for committing election fraud.
“The Democrats are talking about how they’re working so hard to get millions of votes from Americans living overseas. Actually, they are getting ready to CHEAT! They are going to use UOCAVA to get ballots, a program that emails ballots overseas without any citizenship check or verification of infinity, whatsoever. (Foreign interference?),” the former president fumed online.
Unlike noncitizen voting, which is a federal offence, this is actually legal. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act renders nearly 3 million people living abroad, including US military members and their families, eligible to vote.
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On the contrary, Democrats presented a relatively higher number of 9 million Americans living overseas being eligible to vote, sparking speculations of fraudulent registrations and foreign interference in elections. The Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington debunked the rumours, saying it “integrates factual claims with unfounded accusations and omits key context about election security measures that would prevent illegal voting (like that alleged) from impacting election results.” The report further attested that the DNC memo “made an erroneous claim” about the 9 million mark estimation. “Government estimates of eligible UOCAVA voters are much lower. The rumour uses this discrepancy as evidence to allege that Democrats are planning to illegally register large numbers of ineligible or noncitizen voters,” the fact-check analysis explains.
According to Hennepin County official, a county courier vehicle was pictured earlier in October at Edina City Hall with its trunk left open, with election ballots left unattended during a ballot transfer pick up.
The emerging news led many on X to question this year’s “election integrity,” correlating the image with the same heavy allegations as 2020. However, the official Twitter account of the City of Edina shut down the claims, confirming online, “The vehicle pictured is a Hennepin County courier that came to pick up Edina’s absentee ballots this morning. Inside his vehicle are ballots that he picked up from other cities before coming to Edina. All transfer cases were received in sealed condition, and all expected ballots are accounted for by Hennepin County, according to Daniel Rogan, Hennepin County Auditor.”
In a follow-up response to questions raised by netizens, the same communications spokesperson responded with a link to surveillance footage corroborating their explanation: “This was a Hennepin County courier. I am not aware of the company name. The surveillance footage from the parking lot shows one person exiting the vehicle and then return with Edina’s ballot transfer cases on a dolly. Those cases were loaded into the van with the ones that were photographed. The City has released surveillance footage of the parking lot at the time, which shows the ballots in the County courier vehicle were not tampered with while left unattended.”
In light of the “lapse in protocol” that “should not have happened, and is unacceptable,” officials later revealed that the driver responsible for the crowd-rousing development was terminated after the incident, as per Fox 9.
The previously reported incident offers the ideal segue to people’s fear of ballots being manipulated and jacked up in favour of Democrats. An X user wrote on October 18, “PREDICTION: The Democrats are going to steal this election, just like the last one. MILLIONS of fake ballots have already been printed and are being distributed to the ballot stuffing centres across the states. Democrats don’t even care if you notice, at this point. They’re just going to unload PALLETS of BALLOTS and run them through the machines, even in full view of the public, and then declare Kamala the winner no matter what. This is the plan.” The now-viral post has amassed over 4 million views.
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The incessant incendiary attacks ultimately led voting machine manufacturers, including Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, to enlist legal help by filing lawsuits against media outlets pushing the unfounded claims. One such suit resulted in a $787.5 million settlement against Fox News.
Among more recently sowed seeds of the same rhetoric, Trump got on his Truth Social platform and launched a scathing attack: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before. REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!” The pivotal battleground has especially churned out a heavy-stakes contest, with both presidential candidates reportedly tied in the polls.
In addition, the former president further cited “some bad spots in Pennsylvania,” including York County, which had supposedly received “THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT Voter Registration Forms and Mail-In Ballot Applications from a third party group.”
His list went on with Lancaster County as his next target for being “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms.”
The whole debacle blew up beyond comparison, with Trump’s campaign suing Bucks County for pushing Trump-leaning voters away from submitting mail ballot applications, as Time reported.
Countering Trump’s scrutiny, state officials ensured they were actually working towards preventing election disorder. “The system is working in this case,” the National Association of Elections Officials’ Tammy Patrick said. “…the registration applications that were submitted that were questionable were isolated and are being investigated.”
Bucks County officials addressed the GOP’s accusations, which were widely spread on social media and amplified by pro-Trump influencers like Elon Musk. Though acknowledging the “miscommunication” earlier, local officials pushed back against election fraud claims and labelled them wildly exaggerated.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) wrote back on X, “ Let’s remember, in 2020, Donald Trump attacked our elections over and over. He’s now trying to use the same playbook to stoke chaos, but hear me on this: we will again have a free and fair, safe and secure election — and the will of the people will be respected.”