Trump suggests delaying election
Expert says it’s a move from the ‘autocrat’s playbook.’ Allies also reject idea outright.
He lacks the authority to postpone the Nov. 3 balloting, and his GOP allies swiftly reject the idea.
WASHINGTON — In a desperate struggle to resuscitate his reelection campaign, President Trump has tried ignoring the coronavirus crisis, spreading racist fears about poor people bringing crime to the suburbs, and promising that an economic miracle is right around the corner.
None of it has worked, so Thursday he attempted a new tactic — suggesting that widespread voter fraud could require delaying the Nov. 3 election. No U.S. presidential election has ever been postponed, even in times of national crisis.
There’s no evidence that mail-in ballots have led to significant voter fraud, as Trump claimed, nor does a president have the authority to unilaterally postpone an election. Only Congress can change the date under the Constitution, and Republican leaders — including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield — swiftly rejected the idea.
Trump broached the possible postponement of the election early Thursday on Twitter.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” he wrote.
Trump faced blowback from across the political spectrum, including a scathing op-ed from Steven Calabresi, co-founder of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that has worked closely with the administration to reshape the U.S. federal judiciary.
“This latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate,” Calabresi wrote.
Trump did not back down at a White House briefing later Thursday. He issued dire warnings about the integrity of the coming election, reinforcing concerns that he is seeking to undermine faith in the balloting if he loses.
“These elections will be fraudulent, they’ll be fixed, they’ll be rigged,” he said.
In April, the president denied wanting to postpone the election, but now he’s trailing Joe Biden, the likely Democratic nominee and former vice president, by double digits in national surveys, and his support is lagging in key battleground states.
Democrats have sought to expand use of mail ballots in November to make it easier to vote during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed over 151,000 Americans and raised fears that the virus could spread at crowded polling places. Some states, such as Oregon and Colorado, already hold elections almost entirely through the mail.
California and other states plan to broaden use of mail-in ballots this year, and activist groups worry that election officials in some communities are not prepared to process a glut of mail ballots in a timely manner. But voting experts say there’s no evidence of the widespread fraud that Trump often cites.
When it appeared likely that he would lose to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, he denounced that year’s election as “rigged.” After his victory, he falsely claimed that he lost the popular vote only because millions of fraudulent votes were cast for Clinton.
For academics who study authoritarianism, Trump’s tweet Thursday was an alarming indication that he’s looking to prolong his stay in office.
“This is something that is in the autocrat’s playbook,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University historian.
“You get it out there so people begin to think of it as possible,” Ben-Ghiat said. “Things that once seem completely unacceptable slowly come to be seen as things that could happen, and would be accepted.”
Trump did not say how long he would want to delay the election, or how widespread in-person voting would be possible amid an increase in coronavirus infections.
At least for now, prominent Republicans made clear, in a rare pushback to the president, that they would not consider postponing the election. Even if they supported a delay, House Democrats almost certainly would block the measure.
McCarthy, the House minority leader, said Trump was right to raise concerns about fraud but added that “no way” should the election be delayed.
McConnell, the Senate majority leader, was just as adamant. “Never in the history of this country, through wars, depressions and the Civil War, have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time. We will find a way to do that again this Nov. 3,” he told Kentucky TV station WNKY.
Lawmakers’ options are limited by the Constitution, which restricts the president and vice president to four-year terms. If an election is not held by Jan. 20, the power of the presidency passes to the next in line of succession — currently House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco).
Biden warned in April that Trump might try to delay the election, a prediction that the president’s campaign swiftly condemned as “the incoherent, conspiracy theory ramblings of a lost candidate,” insisting the election would take place Nov. 3.
After Trump’s tweet Thursday, his campaign had a different response.
Hogan Gidley, a spokesman, said Trump was “just raising a question about the chaos Democrats have created with their insistence on all mail-in voting.”