August 10, 2017 01:16 PM UTC

Half of Republicans Would Support Postponing 2020 Election?

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

There are very real consequences of Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2016 election. As the Washington Post reports, a good number of Republicans actually believe the President on this nonsense:

Critics of President Trump have repeatedly warned of his potential to undermine American democracy. Among the concerns are his repeated assertions that he would have won the popular vote had 3 to 5 million “illegals” not voted in the 2016 election, a claim echoed by the head of a White House advisory committee on voter fraud.

Claims of large-scale voter fraud are not true, but that has not stopped a substantial number of Republicans from believing them. But how far would Republicans be willing to follow the president to stop what they perceive as rampant fraud? Our recent survey suggests that the answer is quite far: About half of Republicans say they would support postponing the 2020 presidential election until the country can fix this problem… [Pols emphasis]

…Not surprisingly, beliefs about the 2016 election and voter fraud were correlated with support for postponement. People who believed that Trump won the popular vote, that there were millions of illegal votes in 2016, or that voter fraud is not rare were more likely to support postponing the election. This support was also more prevalent among Republicans who were younger, were less educated, had less factual knowledge of politics and strongly identified with the party.

It apparently doesn’t matter much to these people that election officials all across the country have said for a long time that there is no evidence of widespread election fraud. Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams has been adamant in this position, and there is no actual data to support claims of voter fraud from Trump or his bogus “Voter Fraud Commission.”

As Newsweek reported last week, Trump’s “Voter Fraud Commission” doesn’t even really know why it exists:

The commission investigating President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election doesn’t know what it hopes to achieve, said one of its members Monday.

Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, who serves on President Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, said that he will reject the federal government’s second round of calls to states to submit voter registration data to the group.

Dunlap told the Portland Press Herald Monday that he’s concerned the commission hasn’t made its aims clear and that he’s worried about voters’ privacy.

Both state and national reports have failed to come up with any evidence of widespread voter fraud (including a 2014 report by the Presidential Commission on Election Administration). On the very rare occasion that fraud is discovered here in Colorado, it is almost always perpetrated by Republicans.

Trump has not actually suggested that the 2020 election should/could be postponed, but it is frightening to know that there are a sizable number of Republicans who wouldn’t blink if he did.