Donald Trump’s presidential campaign started recruiting “election observer” volunteers late Friday, after the Republican nominee claimed the only way he would lose Pennsylvania is “if cheating goes on” in “certain areas”.



The application form on the campaign website links directly to a page soliciting campaign donations with the text: “I AM YOUR VOICE.” Trump repeated claims at a Friday night rally, without evidence, that he fears a “rigged” election perpetrated in part by voter fraud.

No Republican candidate for president has won Pennsylvania since 1988, and in 2012 the state’s then Republican government, in court over a voter ID law, admitted in legal papers that its lawyers knew of no instances of in-person voter fraud in the state. The law was struck down in 2014.

Despite this, Trump warned that Pennsylvania voters needed monitoring. “We’re gonna watch Pennsylvania,” he said on Friday. “Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times. The only way we can lose, in my opinion – and I really mean this, Pennsylvania – is if cheating goes on. I really believe it.

“So I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the 8th – go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100% fine,” he added.

Election observers are not unusual and are often relied on to field complaints and concerns from voters. Depending on state law, campaign representatives may be barred from the role. In Pennsylvania, only election officials, certified poll watchers or qualified voters with valid reasons can bring challenges on the grounds of identity or residence, according to the Advancement Project, a civil rights group.

The state’s election code states that a voter “shall have the right to cast his or her vote: without the use or threat of force, violence or restraint; without the infliction or threat of infliction of injury; without any intimidation or coercion upon or against his or her person; or without any other action intended to deny any individual’s right to vote.”

Trump’s initiative to enlist election observers may risk running afoul of a longstanding consent decree that bars the Republican National Committee from engaging in such activities, according to Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.



Writing on the Election Law Blog, Hasen noted that the ruling forbade the RNC from engaging in ballot security efforts, without prior court consent. The decree specifically orders RNC members “refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor”.

In 2013, the US supreme court rejected an RNC request to lift a 30-year-old court order that limits the national Republican party’s powers to challenge voters’ eligibility at the polls.

The businessman’s campaign appeared to be aware of the legal risks of its initiative: signing up to join delivers an email to the registrant with a promise to “do everything we are legally allowed to do to stop crooked Hillary from rigging this election”.

But Trump himself has increasingly spoken about the election in ways that would deligitimise its results, saying in Pennsylvania and Ohio that it might be “rigged”. This warnings have followed polls that show him trailing in key states, including Pennsylvania, where he has a nine- to 10-point deficit, according to a Quinnipiac survey of likely voters published last week.

Earlier this week, Trump specifically warned of voter identity fraud. “You don’t have to have voter ID to now go in and vote, and it’s a little bit scary,” he told Fox News. “I’ve heard a lot of bad things. I mean, people are going to walk in, they are going to vote 10 times, maybe.”

In 2014, a Loyola law school study found only 31 “credible allegations” of voter impersonation out of a billion ballots cast around the country in several elections.

The businessman’s remarks about “certain areas” appears to be an allusion to the fact that in 2012 no one voted for Mitt Romney in 59 Philadelphia voting divisions. A Philadelphia Inquirer investigation corroborated the statistic, by knocking on doors when necessary, and found that it is not unprecedented: in almost exclusively African American neighborhoods like those in Philadelphia, John McCain had zero votes in 57 voting divisions, and whole precincts did not vote for him in Chicago and Atlanta. Barack Obama won 93% of the African American vote nationwide and in Pennsylvania in 2012.

Earlier this month, Barack Obama responded to Trump’s fears of a “rigged” election, saying they suggested a lack of confidence. “Sometimes folks, if they lose, they start complaining that they got cheated,” Obama said. “But I’ve never heard of somebody complaining about being cheated before the game was over, or before the score is even tallied. So my suggestion would be go out there and try to win the election.”







