U.S. President Donald Trump has consistently attacked the integrity of the upcoming presidential election. He has called mail-in voting a “big scam” and has suggested that he may not transfer power if he loses. These are exceptional and unprecedented threats to American democracy. But they mask an equally dangerous fact that we have recently uncovered: A significant portion of the American population agrees with him. This is the tinder for an impending constitutional crisis along with a host of other indicators that scholars are calling to the public’s attention.
Trump has long cast doubt on the validity of American elections. For years he has claimed, without evidence, that millions of ballots were cast fraudulently in the 2016 election and that he should have won by a wider margin. He also claimed that key midterm elections in 2018 were rigged against Republicans.
