Press. voanews.com. EEUU.
U.S. political analysts say Republican Donald Trump's assertion that
next month's presidential election is rigged, and that he might not accept the
outcome if he loses, is unprecedented in the country's long electoral history.
Trump debated Democrat Hillary Clinton for 90 minutes late Wednesday on
a host of issues, trading taunts and policy stances in their third and final
face-to-face encounter. But when asked whether he would accept the result of
the November 8 election, win or lose, Trump wavered, stunning many by
declaring: "What I'm saying is that I will tell you at the time. I'll keep
you in suspense, OK?"
Clinton called his remarks "horrifying," adding, "You
know, every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims
whatever it is is rigged against him."
In 240 years of quadrennial presidential elections in the United States,
occasional very close outcomes have been disputed, because of perceived voting
irregularities or mistaken vote counts. But in every case, political analysts
and historians noted, disputes have been resolved and there was a peaceful
transfer of power to the next administration.
The 2000 election was perhaps the closest vote ever, with a
ballot-by-ballot review in key areas in Florida and a court battle between the
Democratic and Republican parties over details of the recount. The case went to
the U.S. Supreme Court which, in a ruling 34 days after election day, decided
the case in favor of George W. Bush, sending him to the White House as the 43rd
U.S. president instead of former vice president Al Gore.
The Bush-Gore election divided the nation sharply, but both sides agreed
to abide by the court's ruling, and the transfer of power was peaceful and
cordial.
Never before this year, analysts say, has a major-party candidate like
Trump claimed the election was rigged against him weeks before the actual vote.
Although early voting is available in some of the 50 U.S. states, only a few
million votes have been cast so far, out of an expected eventual total of more
than 130 million votes.
By Thursday, Trump had modified his comment on the debate floor
slightly, no longer declaring outright that he would challenge an unfavorable
outcome. Instead, he said he reserved the right to contest voting
irregularities that, in his view, might affect the election overall.
Stolen election 'preposterous'
"It's unprecedented that a candidate would say that he wouldn't
accept the result," political scientist John Gilmour of the College of
William & Mary in Virginia told VOA. There would be no reason for Trump to
accept an election loss in the unlikely event of widespread vote fraud, the
professor added, but that the candidate does not know now that there is any
election fraud.
Gilmour said it is "preposterous" that the U.S. presidential
election could be stolen, because it is decided through a decentralized system
of state elections, rather than by the federal government in Washington. The
vote totals in the states with the largest populations have the most influence
on the overall outcome, not the national popular vote, under the U.S. system of
electoral college voting.
James Gimpel, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, said
the U.S. presidential elections "raise a question of loser's consent"
in the outcome — "consenting to be governed by the winners, that the
losers will go along with the result."
Gimpel said the debate comment by Trump, a real-estate mogul who has
never before run for elected office, was "an admission he's likely to
lose, a rationalization for the loss that does not place the blame where it
belongs, on the inadequacies of his candidacy."
Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state looking to become the
country's first female president, has surged in the last couple of weeks to
more than a six-percentage-point advantage over Trump in national polls, and
also moved ahead of him in closely contested battleground states that will
determine the outcome. Polling analysts give her a 9-in-10 chance of becoming
the country's 45th president, succeeding President Barack Obama when he leaves
office in late January.
Trump's political fortunes have slumped in the aftermath of the
disclosure two weeks ago of a 2005 tape in which he made lewd comments about
women and boasted how he could grope them with impunity because he was a
celebrity host of a television entertainment program. He apologized for his
comments, dismissing his ribald tone as just "locker room talk" and
declaring that he had not actually made unwanted advances on women.
Within days, however, nine women came forward to make public their
accounts of Trump making unexpected and unwanted sexual advances on them that
sounded much like what he had described in the 2005 tape. Trump has denied the
claims.
Mark Major, a political scientist at Pennsylvania State University, said
he thinks Trump's claim that the election is rigged, filled with phantom voters
using the names of dead people, is "the result of sexism."
Trump feels, in effect, that "there's no way a woman could beat me,
Donald Trump," Major said. "Not only is he going to lose, but he's
going to lose to a woman. The only explanation is that the election is
rigged."
University of Virginia political analyst Geoffrey Skelley said if Trump
"loses — and there's no reason to think otherwise — he'll look like a sore
loser."
Skelley noted that a recent national poll showed Republicans and
Democrats alike believe the losing presidential contender should follow U.S.
political tradition and concede to the winner.
Fraud risk close to zero
Edward Foley, an election law expert at the Ohio State University, said
that in the U.S., "it's extraordinarily unlikely that any statewide
election could be rigged ... to manipulate the results."
"And it's especially unlikely with respect to presidential
elections," he continued, "because the way presidential elections
work is that they are 50 different state elections. It's not just one big
national election. The risk of this is exceedingly low, but it's not
zero."
Americans, he said, should have a "very high degree of
confidence" that the election will be carried out fairly. He said Trump's
claim that the election is rigged is "way overstated, irresponsibly
so."
Foley said there is "very strong evidence" that voter
impersonation at balloting locations across the country is
"minuscule." He suggested that a person is more likely to be struck
by lightning than to encounter a voter trying to claim he is someone else to
cast a fraudulent ballot.