RandomGuy
10-28-2016, 01:21 PM
WHEN Donald Trump recently asked his supporters in Ohio to keep an eye out for voter fraud on election day, his plea came with a knowing suggestion: “When [I] say ‘watch,’ you know what I’m talking about, right?” Mr Trump’s worry that the election will be “rigged” has inspired repeated calls for volunteers to serve as poll watchers in cities including Philadelphia, Chicago and St Louis. At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, he had this to say: “You've got to go out, and you've got to get your friends, and you've got to get everybody you know, and you gotta watch the polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania, certain areas”. It would be a shame, Mr Trump said, to lose the White House “because of you know what I'm talking about.”
hat Mr Trump seems to be talking about is scores of black and Latino voters who are unfriendly to his candidacy and—purportedly—not eligible to vote. With little more than a hunch that “of course...large scale voter fraud” prevails in “certain communities”, Mr Trump ignores studies belying the claim. A review of 12 years of allegations turned up just 10 cases of confirmed fraud. Another study found 31 cases of voter impersonation out of a billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014. There are no signs that Democrats are coordinating a national strategy to harness voter fraud to steal the election.
...
Some legal experts note that the Republican nominee’s comments are edging closer to “incitement”, a category of speech that enjoys no constitutional protection. The Supreme Court said in 1969 that a speaker who wilfully attempts to whip up a crowd to commit an imminent crime could be subject to criminal prosecution.
This standard is plagued by vagueness, making incitement quite difficult to establish. But Sonja West, a law professor at the University of Georgia, says it’s not out of the realm of possibility for the 2016 election. “Even if [Mr Trump] is only implying that his followers illegally harass minority voters, if it can be shown that he intends for them to read between the lines and it's likely they will read between the lines...there’s a good argument” for viewing his appeal as “directed to inciting law breaking”.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2016/10/entangled-rigging
hat Mr Trump seems to be talking about is scores of black and Latino voters who are unfriendly to his candidacy and—purportedly—not eligible to vote. With little more than a hunch that “of course...large scale voter fraud” prevails in “certain communities”, Mr Trump ignores studies belying the claim. A review of 12 years of allegations turned up just 10 cases of confirmed fraud. Another study found 31 cases of voter impersonation out of a billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014. There are no signs that Democrats are coordinating a national strategy to harness voter fraud to steal the election.
...
Some legal experts note that the Republican nominee’s comments are edging closer to “incitement”, a category of speech that enjoys no constitutional protection. The Supreme Court said in 1969 that a speaker who wilfully attempts to whip up a crowd to commit an imminent crime could be subject to criminal prosecution.
This standard is plagued by vagueness, making incitement quite difficult to establish. But Sonja West, a law professor at the University of Georgia, says it’s not out of the realm of possibility for the 2016 election. “Even if [Mr Trump] is only implying that his followers illegally harass minority voters, if it can be shown that he intends for them to read between the lines and it's likely they will read between the lines...there’s a good argument” for viewing his appeal as “directed to inciting law breaking”.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2016/10/entangled-rigging