Donald Trump’s campaign manager said Wednesday that she does not believe the presidential election will see widespread voter fraud, breaking with the GOP nominee on one of his most common recent talking points.
“No, I do not believe that,” Kellyanne Conway told MSNBC. “So absent overwhelming evidence that there is, it would not be for me to say that there is.”
On the stump, Trump has in recent weeks told his supporters that a conspiracy of media, the Clintons and the political establishment were colluding to steal the election from him — and polls show his supporters believe him. Experts and election officials, many of whom are Republicans in critical swing states, say swaying the outcome of the election through fraudulent means is essentially impossible.
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“So many cities are corrupt that voter fraud is very, very common,” Trump said Monday in Green Bay, Wisconsin. “More than 1.8 million deceased individuals right now are listed as voters.”
Although Conway agreed there’s no evidence to support Trump’s claims of massive fraud, she agreed that votes were being illegally cast.
“We know that people who are dead are still on the voter rolls. We know that people are voting a couple of different times in places,” Conway said. “So you do hear reports here and there, but I think Donald Trump’s point is a larger one. You don’t want him to talk about the other stuff, but he does — you know, there is a larger conspiracy, larger collusion.”
Trump and Conway seemed to be referring to a Pew report from 2012 that found some 12.7 million records out of date, including 1.8 million people who had died whose relatives had not filed the proper paperwork to get them taken off the voter rolls. But there’s no evidence ballots are ever cast in their names: One study found just 31 credible incidents of voter fraud out of more than 1 billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014.
Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, said the real conspiracy was in the “obvious bias in the national media.”
“We will absolutely accept the results of the election,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “The American people will speak, but [they] are tired of the obvious bias in the national media. That’s where the sense of a rigged election goes here.”
Conway made a similar point Wednesday, accusing the press of ignoring damaging stories about leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and a video shot by conservative provocateur James O’Keefe that purports to show Democratic operatives trying to provoke Trump supporters into lashing out.
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee has denied those plans were approved by the campaign or the party, nor were they ever carried out. Still, the two people who appeared in the video have stepped aside from their positions.
“Hillary Clinton must own all of those problems,” Conway said.
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Kellyanne Conway Breaks With Donald Trump on Voter Fraud originally appeared on usnews.com
