US Elections 2024: Donald Trump is sticking to his voter fraud claims; can it work this time?

As Donald Trump crisscrosses the US in a bid to rally his "Make America Great Again" base ahead of the 2024 presidential election, his core message remains unchanged: the only way he will lose is if his Democratic rivals cheat. In speech after speech and in bold social media posts, the former president continues to claim, without evidence, that the U.S. electoral system is plagued by voter fraud. 

At a rally in the battleground state of Georgia, Trump doubled down on this narrative, telling supporters, “We have two things to do: vote, and make sure we stop them from cheating, because they cheat like dogs.” His comments underscore a persistent strategy he has employed since his 2016 campaign, casting doubt on election integrity whenever results don’t favour him.

While these claims have been repeatedly debunked by experts, Trump’s rhetoric has intensified as the 2024 election approaches. Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), warns that such statements could undermine trust in the democratic process. “We saw this playbook before, and it looks like there is a doubling-down of that strategy,” Lakin said, adding that the claims of fraud could wreak havoc during the election and potentially disrupt its outcome.

This isn’t new territory for Trump. Even before his first successful presidential run in 2016, he was questioning the legitimacy of election results. In 2012, Trump dismissed Barack Obama’s re-election victory as a “sham,” and in the 2016 Republican primaries, he accused Senator Ted Cruz of winning the Iowa caucuses through fraud. 

Despite winning the 2016 general election, Trump continued to push the false claim that millions of people had voted illegally, explaining away his loss in the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. As midterm elections approached in 2018, Trump revived his voter fraud narrative, this time blaming illegal votes for the Democrats’ House victory.

Experts, however, consistently assert that voter fraud in the U.S. is exceedingly rare. “Study after study conclusively shows that voter fraud is vanishingly rare,” said Sara Carter, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice. According to Carter, claims of widespread fraud are a myth, with a person being more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud in the U.S.

Yet, despite these facts, Trump’s allegations have become central to his political message, culminating in his most infamous claim: the "Big Lie" of the 2020 election. After losing to Joe Biden, Trump repeatedly argued, without proof, that the election had been stolen through rigged mail-in ballots and “illegal votes.” His unfounded accusations sparked numerous lawsuits and culminated in the violent January 6, 2021, insurrection, as a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn the election results.

Today, even though Trump and several of his associates face criminal charges related to their efforts to overturn the 2020 vote, the former president’s narrative persists. Polls show that around one-third of Americans believe the 2020 election was stolen, with that figure rising to about two-thirds among Republican voters. 

Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, attributes this to the fractured media landscape in the U.S., where conservative audiences often consume news exclusively from right-wing outlets like Fox News and Newsmax. “There is an immensely powerful bubble on the right in which factual information about the election just cannot enter,” Gertz explained. He warned that this “bubble” was key to Trump’s post-2020 election subversion and could again play a role in 2024.

As the 2024 election draws nearer, Trump’s narrative of a rigged system shows no sign of abating. Experts fear that, should he lose, the former president will once again attempt to undermine the democratic process, with potentially severe consequences for the nation's political stability.