President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday gave wings to an unfounded allegation that a large number of ineligible people have voted in the general election on November 8.
“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he said on Twitter, lending credence to a theory that has been circulating on radio talk shows and social media since the results.
No evidence or incident has been cited by anyone so far, including Mr. Trump. Ms. Clinton got two million popular votes more than Mr. Trump.
Campaign for recount
The President-elect’s allegation came as part of a series of tweets on Sunday in which he targeted the campaign for recount of votes in three States that he won belying opinion poll projections. Mr. Trump took potshots at Hillary Clinton and Green Party’s Jill Stein, who were both contenders in the presidential race.
Ms. Stein, who is spearheading the recount campaign, is now focusing on Pennsylvania with a different strategy after getting a favourable decision in Wisconsin last week. She has sought volunteers to file affidavits demanding a recount, as a candidate can force a recount only through a court intervention in the State. A recount can occur also if at least three voters per election district submit affidavits demanding one.
“The Green Party scam to fill up their coffers by asking for impossible recounts is now being joined by the badly defeated & demoralized Dems,” Mr. Trump tweeted, referring to the Clinton campaign’s statement that it will “participate” in the recount.
Recounts rarely result in a reversal of the outcome, and in the 27 State-wide recounts between 2000 and 2015, only three times the outcome changed, according to data compiled by Fairvote, a group that advocates election reforms. Mr. Trump’s leads in the three States where recounts are being demanded exceed by many times the margins ever overcome by a recount.
In a role reversal, Mr. Trump has also recalled Ms. Clinton’s earlier statements in support of the integrity of the election process, which were made while rejecting his charge that it could be rigged.
Earlier, Mr. Trump also claimed he could have won the popular votes also if the contest was set accordingly. “It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4-states instead of the 15 states that I visited. I would have won even more easily and convincingly (but smaller states are forgotten)!,” he said.
‘Felt betrayed’
Meanwhile, the resentment within the Trump camp against the possible induction of the 2012 presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, into the new cabinet was out in the open in Sunday. Kellyanne Conway, former campaign manager for Mr. Trump, said on ABC that people who supported the President-elect “felt betrayed” that Mr. Romney was in the running to be Secretary of State.
She had earlier in the week, on twitter, alluded to the disapproval among Trump supporters of the move, but in the Sunday interview she minced no words. “I’m not campaigning against anyone. I’m just a concerned citizen. We don’t even know if he voted for Donald Trump.”
