Trump says he will accept midterm results "if they're honest elections"
Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he would respect the results of the US midterm elections, adding "I will if they're honest elections." He was asked whether he would accept the outcome if Republicans lost control of Congress. The midterms are scheduled for November 3, and Al Jazeera reported his remarks alongside a series of federal actions on voter rolls and ballots.
The most detailed of those actions involves Washington state. The US Department of Justice (DOJ), the federal government's law department, has threatened legal action unless the state removes around 400 people it says are not US citizens from its voter registration rolls. The DOJ letter set a deadline of noon local time on Wednesday for a response, or the department said it would seek what it called "emergency relief."
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said on Monday that the timing of the request, one week before the general election, was meant to cast unfounded suspicion on the results. State officials said their review of the DOJ's list found outdated information, including a 1994 record cited to support the claim that one person was not a citizen. Washington also won a lawsuit last month arguing that it was not required to hand its entire voter list to the DOJ.
Similar disputes have reached other states. The DOJ has sued Alaska to block certification of its Senate election, pointing to the state's decision to place a second candidate also named Dan Sullivan on the ballot alongside the incumbent senator. Trump said he personally told the DOJ to file that lawsuit. Certification is the formal step in which election officials confirm the official results.
California said it received a DOJ letter asking it to review a list of about 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters. California authorities said a large share of those on the list appeared to have been born in the United States.
The DOJ has also said it plans to deploy a record number of election observers across the country on November 3. Observers are people who watch voting and counting in person, though their formal powers vary by state.
The department has pursued voter-roll cases for months. In February, it sued five more states, including Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Virginia, for failing to produce their voter rolls, which are the official lists of registered voters. In October, it announced charges against 16 people in connection with illegal voting and fraudulent voter conduct, including one person the department described as an illegal alien. The DOJ has said it will keep filing such cases until states comply with what it calls basic election safeguards.
Trump has questioned election results he disliked for years, often alleging fraud without proving it in court, according to Reuters, which published a special report this month examining nine ways the administration could interfere with the midterms. Trump's remark on Tuesday is the latest in that pattern of public statements about the vote.
