USA – Donald Trump is re-using his 2020 playbook to baselessly claim the 2024 election is being stolen from him and is being joined by allies with big megaphones amplifying his falsehoods ahead of Election Day. Trump has made repeated false claims that Democrats are cheating in the election, and he’s twisted isolated problems with voting leading up to Election Day, all in an effort to prime his supporters to falsely believe the election is not legitimate if he loses.

This includes saying voting by noncitizens is a widespread problem. He’s claimed there’s no verification for overseas or military ballots. He’s claimed election officials are using early voting to commit fraud. He’s claimed that massive swaths of mail-in ballots are illegitimate, even as he’s encouraged his supporters to use mail voting this time around.

Most importantly, Trump has claimed that the only way Vice President Kamala Harris can win the election is by cheating. “It’s unfortunate that he sees his path back to the White House as denigrating a basic American institution like elections,” said Ben Ginsberg, a CNN contributor and Republican campaign attorney who has served as general counsel for several previous GOP nominees. “If you’re just starting to pay attention to this, the claims that you’re hearing in 2024 about the election system not being reliable is extraordinarily similar to what he and his supporters were saying in 2020.”

In 2020, Trump lost a close election, and then spent two months trying to overturn the result. In 2024, with polls signaling a razor-thin election in seven battleground states, election officials are bracing for another firehose of misinformation about the result – especially if the election hinges on the results of hundreds of ballots in one or two states.

Election experts say that despite the viral and hyperbolic claims, the vast majority of voters will almost assuredly experience a swift and uneventful experience whenever they vote, whether it’s through early voting, vote-by-mail or on Election Day. As early voting has gotten underway, many local and state officials are showing they intend to proactively knock down falsehoods about the election that spread like wildfire on social media. (CNN)

Photo: Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. (Getty Images)…[+]