In a series of tweets Sunday, Donald Trump boasted about winning the Electoral College vote “in a landslide” and claimed he would have won the popular vote, too. | Getty Election officials in 3 states rebut Trump's claim of fraud

No evidence in New Hampshire. Unfounded in Virginia. Unsubstantiated in California.

Elections officials representing the three states where Donald Trump alleged there was “serious voter fraud” during the Nov. 8 election have all unequivocally rejected the president-elect’s allegations.


“We have heard claims like this in the past, relative to our elections, but we have been provided no evidence that suggests that there is voter fraud on a widespread scale in New Hampshire,” David Scanlan, New Hampshire’s deputy secretary of state, told POLITICO in a phone interview Monday.

“When comments like that are made,” he added, “we become very concerned about the perception, which sometimes is more important than the reality when it comes to conducting elections because the voters need to feel confident that their votes are counted accurately.”

Roughly two months out from his inauguration and with thousands of additional political appointments to make, Trump took to Twitter on Sunday before departing his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, to claim without evidence that he actually won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

And he emerged from his return flight to New York hours later accusing the media of “serious bias” for failing to report “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.” Top elections officials in each state, however, have rebutted Trump’s allegations.

“The claims of voter fraud in Virginia during the Nov. 8 election are unfounded,” Virginia Department of Elections Commissioner Edgardo Cortés said in a statement to POLITICO. “The election was fair and all votes cast by eligible voters were accurately counted.”

Trump offered no evidence to support his accusation that millions of people voted illegally, which was also floated by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a radio host who runs Infowars, a website U.S. News & World Report recognized this month as a fake news site that pushes propaganda. Election experts told POLITICO the claims have no merit.

Hillary Clinton won Virginia by nearly 5 percentage points — a margin of 212,030 votes.

In his statement, Cortés, who was appointed in 2014 by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, said Virginia’s election was “well administered” by more than 130 professionals with assistance from hundreds of election officials and volunteers.

In California, where Clinton led by about 30 percentage points — equivalent to more than 3.9 million votes — as of Sunday afternoon, Secretary of State Alex Padilla tore into Trump with a blistering statement.

“It appears that Mr. Trump is troubled by the fact that a growing majority of Americans did not vote for him,” he said Sunday, according to the LA Times. “His unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in California and elsewhere are absurd. His reckless tweets are inappropriate and unbecoming of a president-elect.”

Trump’s transition team has since failed to cite any significant evidence to support the president-elect’s claims of voter fraud in three specific states, or of “millions of people” who allegedly elevated Clinton to an unprecedented 2.2 million-person popular vote lead.

That’s probably because, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday, Trump’s claims are groundless.

“There has been no evidence produced to substantiate a claim like that,” Earnest said. “But for a reaction and explanation I would refer you to the president-elect’s team.”

Trump transition aide Jason Miller highlighted a 2014 blog post in the Washington Post that has since been debunked and a Pew Center study that Trump frequently mischaracterized on the campaign trail during a conference call Monday morning with reporters when asked for evidence of Trump’s allegations of voter fraud.

But first, he suggested Green Party nominee Jill Stein’s recount effort has gotten too much attention because “there’s absolutely no chance of any election results changing.”

Stein has already collected $6.3 million for recount efforts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Her campaign announced its request for recounts in more than 100 Pennsylvania precincts Monday afternoon. Trump won the state by about 71,000 votes.

The third-party presidential candidate commenced a recount process last week in Wisconsin, too, where Trump won by about 22,000 votes, and she may file a similar effort in Michigan, which certified its results Monday afternoon to officially declare Trump the winner by fewer than 11,000 votes.

Clinton’s top campaign lawyer said over the weekend that Clinton’s campaign would participate in the recount effort, prompting Trump to acknowledge Stein by ripping her in a statement for what he cast as a fundraising “scam.”

“If this much attention and oxygen’s gonna be given to a completely frivolous, throwaway fund-raising scheme by someone like Jill Stein, then there should be actual substantive looks at the overall examples of voter fraud and illegal immigrants voting in recent years,” Miller told reporters on a conference call. “And so that’s the broader message that I think should be taken away here.”