Donald Trump has claimed there is “massive cheating” taking place in the presidential election, hours after saying he would only accept the result of the vote if it was “fair”.
The former US president posted on his Truth Social account on Tuesday afternoon:
Philadelphia’s district attorney responded saying there is “no factual basis whatsoever” to Trump’s claim of cheating.
Larry Krasner said: “The only talk about massive cheating has come from one of the candidates, Donald J. Trump. There is no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation.
“We have invited complaints and allegations of improprieties all day. If Donald J. Trump has any facts to support his wild allegations, we want them now. Right now. We are not holding our breath.”
Trump’s claim sets the scene for what Democrats fear will be another contested election if Kamala Harris is declared the winner, after Trump refused to accept the result in 2020.
Republicans have claimed a variety of instances of voter fraud at this election, including claims of voters being turned away from polling stations during the early voting period and some electronic voting machines malfunctioning.
Casting his vote in Palm Beach, Florida, earlier on Tuesday, Trump said: “If I lose an election, if it’s a fair election, I’m gonna be the first one to acknowledge it.”
At that point the former president said that he thought that the election had been fair, despite legal challenges and “thousands” of lawyers on both sides.
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Asked whether he would call for calm among his supporters if he lost, Trump said: “I certainly don’t want any violence.” He added: “Of course there’ll be no violence; my supporters are not violent people.”
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former lawyer, told The Telegraph he had seen no sign of cheating, but added: “I know anything is possible with crooked Democrats.”
It comes after Kamala Harris took part in a series of local radio interviews in key battleground states as the Democrats mounted their final push to get voters out to polling stations.
Addressing slurs her opponents had levelled against her, including Trump calling her a “low-IQ individual”, Ms Harris said their insults were “meant to distract” her, adding: “I’m not going to get distracted by that noise.”
Nate Silver, one of America’s top polling analysts, has said that the race is “closer than a coin flip”, with his election model predicting Ms Harris would win by a narrow margin.
Trump said on Tuesday that he felt “very confident” after a “great campaign”.
“I think it was maybe the best of the three,” he said. “We did great in the first one. We did much better in the second one. But something happened, and this was the best, I would say.”
He added he would not stand for a fourth time if he lost, and would leave politics “sad and very fulfilled”.
Despite Trump’s promise to respect the result of the election, federal authorities have been making preparations for civil unrest in swing states and in Washington, DC.
In some states, the National Guard has been placed on standby to quell protests, while elsewhere police have been given training on dealing with riots.
Trump has repeatedly claimed the 2020 election was “stolen” and has been indicted on charges of election interference in Georgia for his alleged attempt to overturn the result in that state.
A separate case in Washington accused him of defrauding the American people over his denial of the result and alleged involvement in the Jan 6 riots at the Capitol.
On Tuesday, Trump called for the US voting system to return to paper ballots, after issues with voting machines during this cycle and amid claims from his supporters that computers used in 2020 were central to a conspiracy to “steal” the result for Joe Biden.
“We have too complicated a process,” he told reporters. “If we had a piece of paper watermarked, you know that paper is more sophisticated now than computers.
“It’s watermarked paper, you cannot…it’s unbelievable, what happens with it. There’s nothing you can do to cheat.”
